Dire Pines

Before World War II, Swedish workers had to deal with low wages, scarce work, and the extensive importation of foreign labor, particularly for the purpose of breaking strikes. This did not make foreigners of any stripe very popular, and those from "guest worker" countries were particularly disliked. In this film, set in 1938, a half-Polish boy goes to Poland in search of his mother, runs into financial and psychological difficulties there, and is sent back to a Swedish mental hospital. In another story, an unfortunate woman suffers a miscarriage and ends up at the asylum where the Polish boy is being kept.

Pod decides to change jobs after losing his finger at a sardine packing plant. His new job as a security guard comes with an unexpected perk in the form of a lanky maid who carries a mysterious white book.

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

In a small town on the countryside, every young boy is forced to have the same bowl-head haircut known as the "Yoshino-gari" hairstyle. Then one day, a drastic change occurs when a transfer student with bleached hair comes from Tokyo.

Filmed on Super-8, Footsy is César Velasco Broca's first short, in which he explores the fetishistic obsessions of a socially repressed man.

In Bas’s world, the voices desperately trying to contact him amount to little more than background noise. Sometimes they breach the decaying rooms he inhabits, but they fail to break down the walls surrounding him. That leaves Bas adrift in a twilight zone between delusion and reality, between response and isolation.

A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.

Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.

Mountains silhouetted at dawn. Wind rustling through the tall grass. A woman carries a chair across mountains. Where to?

A man awakes to find himself trapped in a dirty, confined crawlspace. He barely has enough room to move. He also has no memory of why he's there, or why he's bleeding from a stomach wound. Apparently drugged, he occasionally 'zones out' of his surroundings as he tries to edge towards his way to freedom. But the more he explores, the more pain he has to endure, and the more frightening his predicament becomes.

In this quiet, naturalistic dramatic short, six-year old Sarah grapples with understanding mortality after the sudden death of her older brother, David. With the help of her family, she gradually learns how to process his passing and cope with her grief. Written, produced, and directed by Jackie Rivet-River, this short film for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films was awarded the Silver Hugo prize at the Chicago International Film Festival, as well as 12 additional awards internationally.

Carrying the blame for her mother’s pain, Ricki searches for a way out of an abusive family relationship. She and her younger sister face a dilemma no child should… how to get rid of their father?