FEATURE DRAMA / NARRATIVE
Directed by Vicky Shen & Diep Bui with Jeanne Sakata, Clementine Ngo Ahn & Vicky Shen
Competition – European Premiere
LEA, a young Chinese-American woman, once disowned by her immigrant mother and now struggling to make peace, goes through a painful, sometimes comedic, journey that has her teetering between a breakdown and breakthrough.
USA 2013 – Drama – 95mn
Directed by Shervin Youssefian with Kim Estes, Philip Bulcock & Amy Weber
Competition – European Premiere
Fueled by revenge, Michael sets up a meeting with Clef Robie, the man who murdered his wife and child 6 years ago. His plans of killing him come to a standstill when two gunmen rob the diner. Michael takes matters into his own hands when he shoots them and holds the entire diner hostage until he kills his target.
USA 2012 – Drama
HOLLYWOOD SEAGULL
Directed by Michael Guinzburg with Biff McGuire, Lara Romanoff & Oleg Vidov
Competition – European Premiere
Travis is in love with Nina, a beautiful Russian actress. He’s got it all — he lives with his grandfather Bruce on a gorgeous Malibu estate above the crashing Pacific and has just completed a short film of great beauty. But instead of confident and joyful, Travis is depressed and alcoholic. His mother, the movie star Irene Del Mar, is visiting from New York with her younger boyfriend, the film director Trigger. The screening of Travis’ film in front of family and friends is a disaster: Irene interrupts the film and Travis storms off. At the party afterward, Nina meets Trigger — sparks. Travis becomes more despondent and neurotic. Moping on the beach, he throws a rock and kills a seagull. Like a crazy man, he presents the dead bird to Nina. The gift does not please her, and when Travis witnesses Trigger and Nina kissing he loses it and grabs a gun. Boom! Thankfully it is just a flesh wound but Nina is freaked and runs off with Trigger. Two years later, Trigger dumps Nina and goes back to Irene. Nina becomes a drug addict and Travis, whose film ironically has become a great success, rescues Nina from a dive bar in Texas and gets her into a Malibu rehab. Grandpa Bruce has a stroke and Irene and Trigger wing back to California to visit. Nina escapes rehab and returns to the estate for one final date with destiny. And yes, the gun is involved.
USA 2013 – Drama – 95mn
Directed by Paul Hough, Produced by Trip Hope with Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Eddie McGee & Trista Robinson
Out of Competition – European Premiere
Veronica suddenly finds herself in a surreal and horrifying marathon race. The rules are simple: If you are lapped, you die. If you step off the path, you die. Many will start but only one may cross the finish line alive.
USA 2013 – Sci-Fi/Horor – 88mn
MIND’S EYE
Directed by Mark Steven Grove, Produced by Meryem Ersoz with Malcolm McDowell, Dean Cain & Natalie Distler
Out of Competition – World Premiere
Mattie Carver’s world is turning curiouser and curiouser, as space and time seem to be collapsing all around her. Joined by a misfit team of friends, teachers, and two mysterious men in black, Mattie is in a race to restore her world to normal, before it’s too late.
USA 2013 – Sci-Fi/Thiller – 110mn
Directed by Ivan Grbovic with Joseph Bou Nassar, Ali Ammar & Sanda Bourenane
Competition
A young man who quit school without telling his parents and whose shyness is compounded by a slight walking impediment poses as a successful businessman on the Internet. When the girl he’s been chatting with wants to meet him, he is faced with a dilemma.
Canada 2011 – Drama – 93mn
mn
Directed by Andrey Sokolov with Anastasiya Zavorotnyuk & Aleksandr Lazarev
Out of Competition
Two unfamiliar with each other people go travelling together from Moscow to the south of the country, to the sea.. Victor – is the successful programmer, the founder of the virtual best-seller – the programme called “Artefact”. His life was cracked by the tragedy, he lost his beloved wife… His fellow traveler is the beautiful photo journalist. Each of them has his own past and the motive for this trip. Their route from rainy Moscow to heat of the south, from alienation to origin of a feeling which takes place, will be examined by deeply intimate memoirs. Travelers endure unexpected adventures, see hundreds people passable over the huge country. Gradually heroes realize that the travel takes place not in one but in two spaces: the reality flows to the worlds of imaginations, realizing the desires of heroes, very dangerous at times…
Russia 2010 – Drama – 92mn
Directed by Michelle Danner, Produced with Norman Reedus, Garrett Backstrom, Rob Estes, Brian Drillinger & Michelle Danner
Competition – European Premiere
Set in the not so distant future, in Any Town USA, sixteen year old Herman Howards makes a fateful decision. He enters his suburban school and kills thirty nine students, two teachers, and a police officer. Just before his arrest he emails his idol, famous journalist Lax Morales, sending him clips of the shootings captured with Herman’s own digital camera. In the clips Herman tells Lax, “I want to tell my story on your show”. Lax, haunted by his own past, is now face to face with Herman. The movie explores why and how a massacre like this can happen in our society, desensitizing in America, youth violence and bullying, the impact the media has on our individual quest for fame, and ultimately our need for connection.
USA 2012 – Drama – 95mn
Directed by James Jaeger with Rene Heger, Lauren De Long, Francesca Fondevilla, Jonathon Carter Schall & Kendra Munger
Competition – World Premiere
A psychological Surreal drama” a distortion in reality the apprehension between love and Fear an embodiment of the ingrained human Condition that lies deep within our unconscious minds.
USA 2012 – Psychological Drama – 90mn
Directed by Robert Nathan, Produced by Lukas Kendall & R. Nathan with Don McManus, Jay Paulson, Betsy Rue, Catherine Annette, Lee Kholafai & Chris Wylde
Competition – European Premiere
LUCKY BASTARD is the story of a successful pornography website that invites fans to have sex with porn stars, a story that becomes both a morality tale and a reflective take on American society’s preoccupation with sexual desire, humiliation as a product of commerce, and the commoditization of the human spirit.
USA 2013 – Drama/Suspense/Comedy – 94mn
Directed by Sylvain Archambault, Produced by Nicolas Traube with Stellan Skarsgård, Théo Frilet, & Joaquim de Almeida
Competition
The plot of this veritable epic is set in 1555, on a small island in the Guanabara Bay of Rio de Janeiro, where an odd French expeditionary force, made up of sailors, craftsmen, priests, ex-convicts and a Quixotic knight, has just landed. Their objective is twofold: on the one hand, to set up a French colony on this far-off rich continent to compete with the Portuguese, on the other hand, to convert the Indians to Christianity.
Brazil/France/Canada/Portugal 2012 – Historical Drama – 120mn
Directed by Ilaria Borrelli, Produced by Guiddo Freddi with Ilaria Borrelli, Moniroth Setha & Philippe Caroit
Out of Competition
Mia flies to Cambodia to surprise her husband. She finds him brothel- deep with a little girl. Mia’s desire to end the cycle of abuse sends her deep in the jungle…
Italy 2013 – Drama – 90mn