Synopsis

Twelve-year-old best friends Ish and Maram spend their days cruising around on their bikes, building makeshift forts in the nearby woods, and hanging out with their mates at the pool. Ish, who has recently lost his mother, is younger, smaller, and less assertive, while Maram, who is under his father’s thumb at home, has a bit more swagger. As they lean into the end of boyhood, the pair can rely on each other—until a police stop-and-search deeply shakes their bond.

With fine nuance and a lived-in sense of place, musician and artist Imran Perretta paints a deeply felt portrait that explores young male friendship at a precarious moment. The boys’ slang-heavy conversations are affectionately peppered with teasing insults and terms of endearment. News reports of the war in Gaza and of crackdowns on protests are ever present, providing an unsettling backdrop to the daily lives of the Muslim and South Asian communities the boys call home. As an increasingly ubiquitous police presence—in the form of street patrols and the deployment of facial recognition technology—ratchets up tensions, Ish breathes empathy and understanding into its depiction of the uneasy path to manhood.

Synopsis

Kicked out of his last foster home, sullen and misunderstood 17-year-old Christy moves in with his older brother’s family in a working-class neighborhood in Cork. While the brothers struggle to reconnect after years of separation in the shadow of their shared traumatic pasts, Christy begins to find a sense of belonging among the rest of the community, allowing a softer side of himself to emerge. A meaningful life awaits him, if he can evade the darker forces threatening to undermine his future.

A vivid and complex study not only of its protagonist but also of the endearing and strong cast of characters of Cork’s North Side, Christy paints this tight-knit community with humor and tenderness. Rooted in impressive realism, this coming-of-age offers a hopeful portrait of a teen on the precarious threshold of adulthood.

Synopsis

From visionary director Yorgos Lanthimos comes Bugonia, an explosive psychological thriller that offers a pitch-black comic window into our modern age of madness. Provocative and subversive, the film follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men as they burst out of their online rabbit holes and kidnap Michelle, a high-powered CEO they believe to be an alien who has come to destroy us. After the pair chain her in a basement and come face-to-face with the enemy, the two sides—the tinfoil-hat basement dwellers and the steely, soulless corporate executive—soon find themselves pitched in a battle as viscerally unpredictable as it is unexpectedly moving.

Anchored by powerhouse performances from Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and newcomer Aidan Delbis, along with a devilishly sharp script from Will Tracy, Lanthimos constructs an audaciously original portrait of what it means to laugh, cry, and recoil in the fate of humanity.

Synopsis

In this visually vibrant, exhilarating modern romance, a chance meeting between Yas and Dom, two twenty-somethings both reeling from bad breakups, sparks an electrifying day of soul searching in South London. The two form an unlikely connection as they help one another nurse their heartbreak, hoping to restore their faith in love.