Tells the story of Kim, Bas and Michael. Four underprivileged teens living in a disadvantaged neighborhood. They have to deal with aggression, emotional abuse or neglect by their parents on a daily basis. When they meet a new classmate: Daniël, from what seems to be a prosperous family, they take their chance to escape their downtrodden lives. Together with Daniël they decide to conduct his own kidnapping in order to get ransom money from his own father.
Chicken Boy is a dark coming-of-age story in which a lonely boy recognizes parallels between the bullying he endures at school and the neglect he experiences at home.
Zain, a 12-year-old boy scrambling to survive on the streets of Beirut, sues his parents for having brought him into such an unjust world, where being a refugee with no documents means that your rights can easily be denied.
Desperate to be rid of her toddler, a dissatisfied Beverly Hills housewife hires a stranger to babysit and ends up getting much more than she bargained for.
David is transported to the cut-throat world of fashion. Olivia, an up-and-coming fashion designer who gets the opportunity of a lifetime to work for icon Salma Barrie. But things go out of control when Olivia must step up to save the company and fight against a former co-worker who has started a competing company.
“The Moon Is Essentially Gray” is a 3-minute CG animated short about a young child, her makeshift rocket, and her fantastic flight to the moon. The film explores the role escapism plays in the lives of children who suffer some form of neglect or abandonment by their caregivers. It is ultimately about the struggle to gain (or regain) personal power, joy, and freedom.
Coming of age story about two inner city youths, who are left to fend for themselves over the summer after their mothers are taken away by the authorities.
When a supernatural pit worshipped by a remote community in the woods demands a new blood sacrifice, a young woman struggles to find a way to survive as the pit lashes out in anger.
The first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, 'Flight of the Red Balloon' tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first Western film. It is based on the classic French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse.
From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.
Eddy and Patsy prepare to go on a skiing holiday to hopefully indulge in the jet-setting lifestyle of the international celebrity elite when Saffy is proposed to by her stuffy, upper-class boyfriend, Paolo. Eddy hits the slopes and has a near death experience where God appears to her and tells her it's not yet her time. When Eddy comes to, she waits for a sign that she should get involved in Saffy's wedding. As she returns to the house, it appears all hell has broken loose- relatives piling up, practically squatting, and Saffy about to lose her mind. Eddy calms her by throwing money at her as they bond together, planning Saffy's dream wedding. What could go wrong?
Moemi is not overly pleased when Yukio brings home a couple of turtles to keep her company. Although Yukio works at home as a writer, Moemi feels neglected and desired a dog or a cat, but neither is allowed in their apartment.
A black comedy set in the 1960s in a small Netherlands community, populated by a cast of eccentrics, all of whom hold a range of sexual obsessions and frustrated desires.
The young daughter of a politician runs away due to lack of attention. She hides in the car of two not too bright crooks who are slowly converted into parent figures as the police web closes down on the supposed kidnappers.
Jamie leaves the children's home to live with his paternal grandmother. After working in a mine and in a tailor's shop, he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.
When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
Despite their social differences Luise, called Pünktchen, a girl from rich parentage befriends Anton, a boy who has to earn his own money in order to afford life for his sick mother and himself. Together they undergo different adventures, even preventing a theft in Pünktchens home
Papa Strauss, a widower, is being shifted around from one married-son's home to the other, and is unwelcome at all because his daughter-in-laws' object to his smelly pipe smoking. Finally the family tucks him 'out of sight and out of mind' into a nursing home, with very little 'honor thy father' thought given to it. However, unmarried daughter, Lena, who loves her father dearly, has a bright fiancée, who makes a lot of money off of a patent, and they make a home for him.
Short documentary film about Maryland, a corner of Stratford neglected by the Olympic ‘regeneration’. Seen through the eyes of veteran grime emcee Chronik.
An agoraphobic woman trapped in a toxic marriage, struggles with a rat problem.