Twice Upon a Time

Three stories. Three ages. Three men. Grandfather, father, son. One is an orderly, one is a leading sportsman, and one is a master taxidermist. One desires love, the other success, and the third immortality.

A Japanese man and a gay bar-owner in Hong Kong drink beer as they talk about their childhood and experiences.

How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.

Despite an unrivaled talent for communicating, Jake has trouble talking to women. When an impossible situation presents itself, Jake ignores the signs and goes on a wild goose-chase to pursue his quest for love. When his plan is foiled, a new best friend helps him finally express himself successfully to a woman – without uttering a single word.

An unemployed Latvian gets a job as an agent finding a house in France.

Osman can understand his mother tongue, Kurdish, but cannot speak it, and he speaks Turkish, which happens to be his second language, but cannot understand it. As a result of this condition of his, Osman starts to fail at handling two concurrent tasks. Just like he cannot respond to his patrons while he is working, he cannot engage in a conversation with his friends whilst they are having coffee together. Even though he wants to get married, he fails at sustaining a long-term relationship with women whom he meets. Osman’s life starts to change after a customer tells him that she could help him with his obsession.

A teacher attempts to teach his students to properly enunciate the letter 'R'.

With the 70s behind him, San Diego's top rated newsman, Ron Burgundy, returns to take New York's first 24-hour news channel by storm.

Yu Ming is bored of his life in China and decides to go to Ireland. He studies the language, but is dismayed to find that no one understands him when he gets there.

A crazy referendum throws Switzerland into a state of emergency. By the acceptance of the initiative “No Bilangue” there should be from now on only one national language: French. Many German-speaking Swiss are therefore having a crisis.

As their Debs application deadline approaches, a closeted couple must sort their domestic issues as Gaeilge to prevent their classmates from knowing they’re an item. However, translation issues leave their relationship in jeopardy.