Backward, Forward, and All Around

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Years after a pandemic wipes out most of the female population, a father struggles to shield his daughter from a dangerous and predatory world.

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.

Julie is a new mom and children's book author, who escapes into the bright Crayola-colored world of her creation in order to leave behind the darkness caused by her post-partum depression.

Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.

After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out

A poetic and powerful story of a father forced to choose between love and duty.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Isabelle, a geneticist recovering from a toxic marriage, is raising her only daughter, Zoe, with her contentious ex-husband. Zoe means everything to her mother and so when tragedy strikes the fractured family, Isabelle travels to Russia in seeking the help of a world-renowned fertility physician who Isabelle believes can help bring back her little girl.

Prerna, a teenager growing up in rural India, comes of age when she’s introduced to the sport of skateboarding. As a result, she has to fight the odds to follow her dreams and compete in the national championship.

A couple's lives are thrown into disarray when their daughter is cast opposite a controversial major star.

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.

When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.

A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

A student who has graduated from a computer science degree, attends a job interview at a company, but his deafness makes him doubtful.

Pepe has left the psychiatric hospital after serving time for stealing to work. Only the solidarity of Antonio, a disabled activist, allows him to build a fragile life on which to project his weak hopes. Nevertheless, his need to fit in a senseless world becomes a desperate chore. The horizon of his long-awaited “normality" proves unreachable. The relationship with Antonio interpellates his view of life, inviting him to recognize himself as an anomaly and invent a new madness in which to live.

The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

A disabled man's irresponsible brother, previously thought dead, appears and takes over the house.

A deaf man and his girlfriend resort to desperate measures in order to fund a kidney transplant for his sister. Things go horribly wrong, and the situation spirals rapidly into a cycle of violence and revenge.

Hazuki and Aoi are classmates but their relationship outside class is fraught, and outside school non-existent. But when both girls are drawn to helping an elderly woman, they're forced to interact, confronting their differences and similarities as well as their deepest secrets.

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity.

Actress and filmmaker Robyn Adams discusses her experiences with autism, gender identity, and learning to embrace her flaws. Also, she's Frankenstein's Monster now.

Scrappy, defiant, and done being treated like a burden, Judy Heumann turns her outrage into a revolution. In 1977, she and more than 100 disability rights protestors send a very loud message: The system is broken—not us.

When her partially blind friend Siti goes missing, Laura, who's hard of hearing, rushes to the police with a bizarre tale. Played by actors with disabilities.

The Drummer and the Keeper tells the story of the unlikely friendship formed between two young men: Gabriel, a reckless young drummer who revels in rejecting society’s rules and Christopher, a 17-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome, who yearns to fit in. This heartwarming story shows the strength of the human bond in the face of adversity.

Dimitris Thalassias is a single singing teacher at a senior high school in Athens and undertakes the care of a child abandoned by its mother at the door of the foundling hospital. He does everything required to raise it right, but he sees his life changing unexpectedly, since his fiancée leaves him, and his relations with his students go from bad to worse. While this is happening, the mother shows up to claim her child. In the end, everything is corrected, and a solution is provided through marriage.

Billie Dupree is a flight instructor at an old Texas airport. When a young girl in a wheelchair finds the airport by watching gliders fly, she decides she wants to learn how to fly. Dupree teaches her to fly with some special controls compensating for her handicap. Koup Trenton runs an aircraft repair service and is trying desperately to get an old airplane back in the air. The three, together, put the young girl and the old plane up in the air.

The 43rd edition screens Neighbors, with five segments about the theme “neighbors”: not only about physical proximity, but also about relationships. In Brazil, Olga is a 90-year-old black woman who lost her husband one year ago; her neighbors, who come from different parts of the world, interrupt her grief. In Russia, an employee tries so hard to please his boss that he becomes inconvenient. An Indian woman, with the help of her male friend, decides to learn how to drive, an uncommon practice for women in the country. In China, an elderly, owner of an old and decadent barbershop, argues with his son, who wants to change the business. In South Africa, a group of homeless fights for the right to housing.

Grace is a poignant coming of age drama centered on a woman in her late 20s with Down Syndrome, navigating the complexities of adulthood, independence and first love from within a residential support house. When Grace pushes the boundaries set for her, the consequences ripple through her carefully managed world.

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. Colours, fish, dogs, and kites don't seem important to the adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks, and neatness. Ishaan cannot seem to get anything right in class; he is then sent to boarding school, where his life changes forever.

When a high school wrestling coach recruits outsider Noah, a student with autism, for his tram, Noah has to confront his overprotective single father and overcome his biggest fear.

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.