"A Couple" is a film about a long term relationship between a man and a woman. The man is Leo Tolstoy. The woman is his wife, Sophia. They were married for 36 years, had 13 children nine of whom survived. Each kept a diary. Although they lived together, in the same house, they wrote letters frequently to each other. Leo Tolstoy insisted that they read their diaries aloud to guests at dinner parties. The Tolstoy’s were also a dysfunctional couple, arguing frequently and being very unhappy with each other while occasionally enjoying passionate moments of reconciliation. The film is Sophia’s monologue about the joys and struggles of their life together, loosely drawn from their letters to each other and their diary entries.
Young and promising doctor loses everything due to her conflict with the totalitarian Soviet regime – career, love for life and even mother’s instinct denying breast milk to her baby. However, the grown-up daughter becomes her only supporter who tries to help ease mother’s depression and learn to live under the Soviet regime. The lifelines of mother and daughter flow in the occupied Soviet Latvia from 1945 to 1989 when the Soviet Union collapses. “I didn’t want to live and I didn’t want her to drink milk from a mother who doesn’t want to live.” The story is based on the bestseller Soviet Milk by the renown Latvian novelist Nora Ikstena. Soviet Milk has been translated and published in more than 20 countries.
A married woman with an unwanted pregnancy lives in a time in America where she can't get a legal abortion and works with a group of suburban women to find help.
In December of 1925, renowned American dancer Isadora Duncan arrives at the Soviet-Latvian border, where she makes arrangements for her lover Yesenin to flee from the USSR. All he has to do is get on the train to Riga. The poet secretly travels from Moscow to snowy Leningrad, where he gets caught up in a crazy whirlwind of events. While trying to evade surveillance by secret services, he has a series of fateful encounters. He finds both solace and despair in the city’s criminal underground. Despite the many obstacles he faces along the way, he remains determined to reunite with Isadora.
A fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. On Christmas Eve 1877, Elisabeth, once idolized for her beauty, turns 40 and is officially deemed an old woman; she starts trying to maintain her public image.
The true story of Mamie Till Mobley’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14 year old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi.
The story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen, and General Nanisca as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life.
The compelling story of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, a Spanish Roman Catholic Archbishop, writer and publisher, missionary, and confessor to Queen Isabella II of Spain. Declared a saint in 1950, Claret is the founder of the religious congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known as the Claretians.
Shantaye Anderson is bold, black, beautiful, intelligent, and passionate about love. Born in rural St. Lucia during post-colonial times, she struggles to process the loss of a mother who passed away hours after bringing her into the world. She finds consolation in her loving paternal grandmother, Mam Lucess, who tries to equip her for the world. Her father, Edson Anderson, does his best to care for Shantaye after the passing of his wife. However, when he remarries, the young girl is suddenly exposed to the jealous wrath of an unreasonable stepmother. Her life changes forever when she falls in love with Jean Claude Le Marche. He is the handsome son of the community's white doctor, a charismatic young man who promises to love her until death. All hell breaks loose when Shantaye's family and the community folk realize the pair are in love. To save Shantaye from making what he believes to be a grave mistake, Edson sends her to war ravaged England, still reeling World War II
"1982" is a life-affirming coming-of-age tale set at an idyllic school in Lebanon’s mountains on the eve of a looming invasion. It unfolds over a single day and follows an 11-year-old boy’s relentless quest to profess his love to a girl in his class. As the invasion encroaches on Beirut, it upends the day, threatening the entire country and its cohesion. Within the microcosm of the school, the film draws a harrowing portrait of a society torn between its desire for love and peace and the ideological schisms unraveling its seams. In his debut feature, director Oualid Mouaness delivers an ode to innocence in which he revisits one of the most cataclysmic moments in Lebanon's history through the lens of a child and his vibrant imagination. The film demonstrates the complexities of love and war, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery, but became a vocal critic of the government's continuation of the war when he returned from service. Adored by members of the aristocracy as well as stars of London's literary and stage world, he embarked on affairs with several men as he attempted to come to terms with his homosexuality.