Tomato

Do you have to be miserable to be funny? More than sixty comedians—including stand-ups, writers, actors, and directors from the US, Canada, and abroad—take on this question, sharing anecdotes and insights with lively enthusiasm.

A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.

A slick movie director tricks a hayseed horse into becoming a stunt double.

Gianina, a young Romanian, works as a housekeeper for a bourgeois family in Bordeaux. In the evenings, she rehearses the role of a maid with an amateur theater troupe in an adaptation of The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau. She takes care of Louen, her employers’ son, while her own daughter is growing up far from her, in Romania. The maternal absence deepens into a wound but, as Christmas approaches, the promise of a reunion begins to take shape.

Pauline Horovitz has been filming her father since 2009. In this new chapter with hints of a bittersweet documentary comedy, the hero, a former doctor “programmed” to work, takes advantage of his retirement to become an actor. Following the first steps of this liberating new life, the daughter-filmmaker watches her “creature” escape her…

A lonely actor spends his time making self-tapes.

A famed Hollywood actress from Lebanon walks viewers through the pivotal steps she took to achieve international success in her career, until she is forcefully disrupted by the unexpected.

Imran Khalil made it: he finally got his big break as an actor. However, after an incident at a press event goes viral and gets him fired, he is forced to return to Luton and figure out his next move.

An acting teacher's day goes miserably as he anxiously awaits an answer for his audition.

Squeezing out every drop of opportunity she has left, a young actress in the final rounds of her dream drama school audition is willing to risk and sacrifice everything (and everyone) to get what she desires.

Fledgling comic Benjy Stone can't believe his luck when his childhood hero, the swashbuckling matinee idol Alan Swann, gets booked to appear on the variety show he writes for. But when Swann arrives, he fails to live up to his silver screen image. Instead, he's a drunken womanizer who suffers from stage fright. Benjy is assigned to look after him before the show, and it's all he can do to keep his former idol from going completely off the rails.

Actor Tiina Vainio has to make an audition tape in a hotel room as soon as possible for the role of her life.