Synopsis

In an act of desperation, impulsive black sheep Alejandro (Dario Yazbek Bernal) flees his home in Mexico. On the run from his unforgiving father, Alejandro ends up in New York City. There, he meets Jack, a pet store worker whose own, similarly wealthy family life is fracturing after his father (Willem Dafoe) betrayed his mother (Emmanuelle Seigner). Together, the two young men enter a whirlwind romance, sending them into a dead-end world of passion, drugs, and depravity.

With Pet Shop Days, first-time feature director Olmo Schnabel, son of artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, has crafted a gritty throwback to American independent cinema. (No wonder Martin Scorsese signed on as an executive producer.) Imbued with raw emotion and propulsive pacing, and led by an explosive performance by Yazbek Bernal (Gael’s half-brother) as the wild and wounded Alejandro, Pet Shop Days is a riveting portrait of lost young men in search of connection.

Synopsis

In his wry and insightful new film, Festival alum Erik Gandini (Videocracy, The Swedish Theory of Love) chronicles the past, present, and future of labor. We meet today’s workaholics — a hilarious American motivational speaker; a tragic South Korean office worker — as well as those on the opposite end of the spectrum. These include grossly underemployed young Italians and ordinary Kuwaiti citizens who receive hefty paychecks for sitting in offices doing nothing.

After Work asks big questions: When A.I. and robots take over the global workforce, what is the fate of human industry? Is the promise of universal basic income a blessing or a curse? The film offers few answers, instead using touches of humor, memorable characters, and evocative cinematic images to create an intoxicating and provocative exploration of humanity’s relationship with work, how our jobs define us, and what happens when they’re gone.

Synopsis

Chile, 1984. As a wave of UFO sightings — and a military dictatorship — sweep the country, a group of short-wave radio operators receive mysterious communications from a nearby island. Through the crackling voices, they learn that a highly developed extraterrestrial race has taken residence on Friendship Island and is offering the listeners the promise of a better world.

Mixing shimmering, Twilight Zone-esque black-and-white sci-fi reenactments with lucid archival footage, this stranger-than-fiction story of supernatural intrigue follows both the citizens swept up in the mystery and Ernesto de La Fuente, the enigmatic man at its center. Uniquely stylized, utterly fascinating, and sharply witty, Alien Island goes beyond a tale of close encounters to reveal a far more insidious story of lies, accountability, and political oppression.

Synopsis

Nino, a gay teen from a deeply religious family, is the continual target of homophobic attacks by the neighborhood boys. His parents decide to temporarily move the family to a pious village in the countryside, where the legend of the Almamula — a monster that haunts the forest waiting to take those who commit impure acts — frightens the community’s youth into hushed submission. Amidst the summer heat, Nino’s desires and impulses are unignorable, and he finds himself seeking out temptation and sin. To escape from a reality rife with repression and hypocrisy, Nino willingly succumbs to the mysteries of the forest.

A rich and seductive fable, Carnal Sins is a darkly stunning first feature from Juan Sebastián Torales that blurs the borders of fantasy and reality, religion and myth.

Synopsis

Brothers Pietro and Alvise, heirs in a long line of fishermen, are at odds about the future of their family home. Is the house on the picturesque island of Giudecca in the Venice lagoon a vital lifeline to a shared history and self-sufficient way of life or their ticket to financial freedom? An epic, impossible clash of wills ensues, bringing into relief the human impact of global tourism on life in the sublime city.