Live a Bit Longer

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

Jean is young, gay, and promiscuous. Only after he meets one or two women, including Laura, does he come to realize his bisexuality. Jean has to overcome a personal crisis and a tough choice between Laura and his male lover Samy.

A young woman chronicles her childhood of neglect and isolation.

Sean is taken to a motel and is given a prostitute for his 18th birthday by his father. He must sleep with her to "fix" his questionable homosexuality. "Pretty Boy" is a coming of age story of a young bullied teen, Sean, struggling with his sexuality and the hardships of high school. After his father finds some questionable magazines in his room, this devout Christian will go to any lengths to get his son to find the light and "perform" the way a man should. Sean is introduced to Katie, a prostitute that understands the stigmas of modern society and helps him see the true light that is within him.

A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.

Grieving and facing the consequences of their crimes, the Traoré brothers get one last chance to forge a new path.

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees among the urban chaos a moving oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide.

A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.

The petite waitress Johnny works and lives in a truck-stop, where she's lonely and longs for love. She develops a crush on the garbage truck driver Krassky, although her sleazy boss Boris warns her that he's gay.

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.

Aging painter Louis and his wife Michelle struggle to cope with Louis' advancing dementia.

Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.

At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.

Louis, a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.

When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.

Arriving from all over the Eastern Bloc, the men who loiter around the Gare du Nord train station in Paris are scraping by however they can, forming gangs for support and protection, ever fearful of being caught by the police and deported. When the middle-aged, bourgeois Daniel approaches a boyishly handsome Ukrainian who calls himself Marek for a date, he learns the young man is willing to do anything for some cash.

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

Island of Tahiti. French government official De Roller is a calculating man with impeccable manners, capable of dealing with both high society and the locals he frequents in shady joints.

People of different ages and corporalities live an approach with their body in search of the exploration of their sexuality, moving away from the constructions and social taboos.

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

A group of dancers congregate on the stage of a Broadway theatre to audition for a new musical production directed by Zach. After the initial eliminations, seventeen hopefuls remain, among them Cassie, who once had a tempestuous romantic relationship with Zach. She is desperate enough for work to humble herself and audition for him; whether he's willing to let professionalism overcome his personal feelings about their past remains to be seen.

In New York City's gritty East Village, a group of bohemians strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.

A drama about a boy who's inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and challenges repressive school authority in 1969 Denmark.

Catalão, Brazil, 1984. The rural region of Batalha dos Neves is made up of large crop pastures, a few farms and divided in half by the São Marcos River. Antonio lives alone and isolated taking care of his small farm until the day he encounters Marcelo, a lonely motorcycler who suffers an accident crossing the region. Antonio takes care of Marcelo’s wounds. The two fall in love and live a story that transforms, destabilizes, and causes ruptures in each of them.

It's the run up to prom night for Leila and her friends in the Garw Valley. With money tight, and the pressures of the cost of living weighing heavy on her shoulders, will it stop Leila's celebration?

Having recently moved to the village of Ynysybwl, 12-year-old Ricky Runnerbean is challenged by the territorial Bwl Boys gang, and his courage is put to the test.

Sebastian's (16) sheltered small-town life changes suddenly when his family takes in 15-year-old Kolja, supposedly the son of his father's recently deceased girlfriend. In addition to his little sister, another teenager now lives with them. Although the two boys are strangers to each other at first, they begin to open up to each other more and more and discover that they are biological brothers. The relationship of trust with his parents breaks down and when Sebastian and Kolja become closer than they expected, Sebastian's life is suddenly turned upside down, as he has found not only a soul mate in his new brother, but also a real, first love. Overwhelmed by their feelings, the two hide their relationship, but when the secret, incestuous relationship is discovered, the family breaks out of the social structure of the small town and comes into conflict with societal norms. Everything that follows is a rollercoaster of emotions.

Inside a block of flats, a young woman decides to act about something concerning her for a long time.

When a crook decides to go straight, his jealous cast off moll exposes him to the police.

When Sam, a woman mired in regret, goes to visit her aged parents, the disappearance of her mother's pet bird threatens to unravel her tenuous hold on life.

A bored bisexual millionaire picks up a young destitute street artist and whisks her away to her villa in Saint Tropez. They meet a dashing local architect and both fall for him, setting in motion a ménage à trois of deception and betrayal.

Almost a decade since larger-than-life glam-rock enigma Brian Slade disappeared from public eye, an investigative journalist is on assignment to uncover the truth behind his former idol.

Being scolded while playing, three children plot small revenge on an old lady. A decision they regret later.

After the death of his mother, Emilio is not prepared to manage a cursed inheritance, the promiscuity of his desires and the discovery of a love. At 18 years old, he will be puzzled when he realises that fate sometimes hangs on something as fragile as the flight of a dove.

A short film in which an innocent northern girl discovers her sexual identity on a trip to London, where she goes into a lesbian bar/club, and considers revealing her gayness to her mother.

A young man recently released from prison attempts to rebuild his life after the death of his mother.

American CIA Field Operative, Johnnie Allen, is assigned to Denmark for his first mission. An American spy highly placed in the Kremlin is to be spirited out of Russia, and it is Johnnie's job to get him safely to Antwerp where the agent will board a freighter. Johnnie, who is a young gay man, meets and falls in love with a Danish lad named Sander, who is apparently straight. Wanting to keep his friend close to him, he makes the mistake of bringing him on the mission. What will become of their friendship if Johnnie confesses his love to Sander? And is the Russian agent all he seems to be? Set against a backdrop of European espionage, Happy Endings Sleepover is a celebration of gay youth in a world where love should never be Top-Secret.

“There must be a different solution than the one from hell’. Full unadulterated terror (and music). 'The best class always ends with a lesson'. Almost baroque in its ambition and detail, Akerman and Seabra Lopes’ mesmerising short film delves deeply into the hard-wired dread of music lessons. Sewn around Schubert’s steely Opus 1, which is itself based on the no less terrifying legend of Goethe's Erlkönig, their film is a revelation.” International Film Festival Rotterdam.