Fearing the consequences of revealing her pregnancy to her parents and facing limited options amidst increasingly restrictive abortion regulations, a teenager turns to a neighbor her parents warned her about in her desperation for assistance. This decision sets off a chain of events with horrifying consequences.
This film screens as part of the Shorts 3: After Dark – Twisted Tales & Shadows of Innocence program.
A reconstruction of a life through a series of encounters, this decades-spanning portrait of one woman’s romantic history from girlhood crush to middle-life heartbreak investigates the joy and pain of partnership. Liv, a filmmaker and the lead singer of a post-punk band, drifts through a cycle of love and separation, in search of someone or something — even she can’t grasp what, exactly — with a sense of optimism and self-aware irony.
Vulnerable, playful, and honest, this offbeat rom-com oozes with charisma in its montage and mise-en-scène, and is buoyed by original glitter-grunge music. But, much like the character of Liv herself, the delightful, wry exterior of this confessional film belies an inner depth that plumbs questions of intimacy, compatibility, and connection without the promise of answers or resolutions.
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Not content to let Oppenheimer ask all of the big questions, German director Timm Kröger combines old Hollywood style with heady metaphysical substance in the intellectual thriller The Universal Theory. Set in 1962 at a quantum mechanics conference in an isolated lodge nestled amid the towering landscapes of the Swiss Alps, The Universal Theory is the story of a gifted young physicist, his curmudgeonly mentor, and an enigmatic jazz pianist who knows things about our wunderkind scientist that he’s never told another living soul.
Driven by mind-bending twists, improbable coincidences, and Hitchcockian suspense, The Universal Theory is a captivating nesting doll of a film that nods to the German masters of old Hollywood and considers the metaverse theory from a refreshingly intelligent point of view. Kröger — himself also a cinematographer — films his tale with an eye for the majestic natural beauty that surrounds our characters, effectively evoking both the paranoid postwar era and the brain-tickling complexity of theoretical physics.
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John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
English archaeological scholar Arthur has the uncanny ability of intuiting where to find hidden artifacts. Recently released from an Italian prison, he returns to a small Tuscan village; there, he reunites with a ragtag band of misfits who search for and unearth Etruscan relics buried with the dead. When the group encounter a treasure of immeasurable value, their attempts to traffic the objects bring their actions into sharp focus, and they must question their role in the plundering of history.
Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lázzaro) returns to the Festival with her signature rich and atmospheric storytelling, creating a dreamlike world teeming with ghosts and memory, a timeless space in which ancient history and the present become inextricably intertwined.
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John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
Lubo, a traveling busker, is conscripted into the Swiss army to defend against a potential German attack. While serving, he receives the news that his wife has died and his three small children have been taken by the state as a part of a national reeducation program for Yenisch children. He flees his unit, adopts a new identity, and begins a desperate search to reunite his fractured family.
Featuring stunning production design and a sterling performance from Franz Rogowski (Transit, Passages), the film tracks Lubo’s odyssey as he uncovers the shocking truth about his children. Based on real-life events, the film is both an emotional character study and a penetrating historical epic.
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