Cinema Inutile

In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.

In a strict boarding school nestled in the Himalayas, 16-year-old Mira discovers desire and romance. But her sexual, rebellious awakening is disrupted by her mother who never got to come of age herself.

Three separate stories all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents), and each other. Each of the three parts takes place in the present, and each in a different country. Father is set in the Northeast U.S., Mother in Dublin, Ireland, and Sister Brother in Paris, France. The film is a series of character studies, quiet, observational and non-judgmental. A comedy, but interwoven with threads of melancholy.

40-year-old housewife Cai has lost track of who she is and who she wants to be. During one of her daughter’s basketball matches, she inadvertently injures an elderly woman. This seemingly trivial event is a catalyst for a life spinning out of control, as past events resurface while she moves into an unknown future. Director Qiu Yang follows a series of multi-awarded shorts with his debut feature, a mesmerizing and intimate drama about a woman forced to confront the wreckage of her life and her longing for change?

After the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter, a young couple receives strange videos and realizes someone has been filming their daily life — even in their most intimate moments. The police set up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny of eyes watching them from all sides.

In the depths of the underground coal mines, where danger awaits and darkness prevails, Nam and Việt, both young miners, cherish fleeting moments, knowing that one of them will soon leave for a new life across the sea.

A single mother and her two daughters return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market. Each in their own way, will have to adapt to this new environment to make ends meet and succeed in maintaining the family unity. Three generations of family secrets begin to unravel after the youngest daughter who’s left-handed is told by her traditional grandfather to never use her “devil hand”.

In the Meiji Period, in the 19th century Japan, transitioning towards modernization, BLACK OX explores the relationship between man and ox, inspired by the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” a series of short poems and illustrations from Zen Buddhism tradition that depict the path to enlightenment and spiritual awakening. BLACK OX follows the life of a Man, a former hunter-gatherer who loses his connection to the gods of nature and to his spirituality in the process of becoming a farmer and becoming “Japanese” during the nation’s period of westernization in the Meiji Period. Transitioning from a life in the mountains to a life in the farm, one day he comes across a Black Ox. He somehow succeeds in leading the reluctant animal back to his home, and begins living with it. The OX becomes his companion in a life of seasons in the attempt to reconnect with nature.

When cowboy Billi and his sweetheart Rosa run away together, he is accused of her husband's death and becomes the symbol of a local uprising. Everyone wants his head and only Rosa knows the secret that could finally set them free.

When a soul-shaking viral video shudders through town, a jobless father struggles to keep hold of his existence.