Idhayam Thiraiarangam

What's Up Connection

When a Hong Kong teenager from a poor family wins a trip to Japan, he unleashes a chain of events that will soon bring him from his secluded fishing village to Tokyo. On the way, he connects with a barely competent tour guide and a gender-fluid pickpocket. Upon returning home with this merry band of schemers, he and his family of counterfeiters discover that a multinational conglomerate led by a ruthless Japanese developer has found the village, and is determined to raze it to build the new center of world trade.

The Demon Rat

A teacher in the middle of a messy divorce discovers that her husband has been recklessly dumping nuclear waste and wreaking havoc on the nearby wildlife. Now, she must contend with a feral, mutated rat in her home, and her soon-to-be ex who will do anything to keep his secrets.

AE-Autoexposure

After a shooting assignment, Henrique is mugged by two armed motor-bikers who steal his camera and speed off. Seconds later, he watches both get hit by a pickup truck driven by a self-appointed avenger, someone weary of feeling defenseless against the urban violence, and who decided to take action. Henrique recovers his stolen equipment and leaves, feeling avenged. But he goes back to find the memory card, with the photos, lost during the crash. From that moment, he is trapped in a situation where he is now the criminal for failing to rescue a victim, who had been his aggressor. Going from the murder scene to the police station, and then to the emergency ward of the public hospital, he attempts to clear himself.

Kiss Me Off The Record

She is a former air hostess; he is a fair-haired St Petersburg-born politician with a secret past and a thorough knowledge of German. Despite the familiar-sounding characters, the film’s makers claim that its hero is not Russian President Vladimir Putin, but a fictional Russian politician named Alexander Platov.

Le Jeu de la vérité

Three Days in August

An adopted Irish American artist confronts her past when both sets of parents come together over a weekend for her to paint a family portrait.

Chasing the White Dragon

Six small town characters are trapped in the nightmare of crystal methamphetamine addiction and each must make the decision to escape the nightmare before their world implodes.

Das Stundenhotel von St. Pauli

West German crime film directed by Rolf Olsen and starring Curd Jürgens, Andrea Rau and Corny Collins. It is set in the red-light district of St. Pauli in Hamburg.

Bukowski at Bellevue

In the spring of 1970 Charles Bukowski took his first plane trip for a poetry reading at Bellevue Community College in Washington state. That he was videotaped by two students apparently was later forgotten, but the tapes were recently rediscovered and have been released by Black Sparrow press. "Bukowski at Bellevue" gives us a fascinating glimpse of the man before he had to be concerned with how celebrity and financial security were affecting him. (It is said that this was only his fourth public reading.) This is Bukowski, then about 50, taken straight. No games, no irony, no self-consciousness--just an ordinary-looking guy, maybe hung over, sitting before a small group of students reading his work with gusto, humor and sensitivity. A man who clearly had lived the marginal life he wrote about with passion and at times a lyrical, even mystical beauty.

Depth Two

1999: While NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, a truck containing 53 dead bodies plunged into the Danube near the border with Romania. No enquiries were carried out. Previously, in Suva Reka, Kosovo: Serbian police herd villagers together. A woman experiences terrible things, bodies disappear into remote mass graves. People as little more than mere matter.

Suck (A Multinational)

Compilation tape with music by various underground musicians, interspersed with random video footage.

Hot Summer in Kabul

A Russian doctor is invited to work at Afghanistan's top hospital during the war, and sees firsthand the carnage caused by the Islamist mujaheddin as they attempt to overthrow the socialist government.