Director Junichi Mori employs a thoughtful hand in this stunningly lyrical first feature about healing scars from the past, finding love, and receiving second chances. Teru works at a laundromat and…
2002
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West Coast Premiere Director Junichi Mori employs a thoughtful hand in this stunningly lyrical first feature about healing scars from the past, finding love, and receiving second chances. Teru works at a laundromat and has seen plenty of people try to wash away both the stains on their clothes and the stains on their past. Teru is a pure-hearted, twenty-year old who dons a knit cap to cover the scar from a childhood accident that left him in intellectual stagnancy.
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Northern California Premiere Winner, Critic's Jury Prize IFP/West Film Festival. Co-filmmakers Josh Apter and Peter Olsen create a haunting beautifully crafted thriller about what happens when ordinary people are pushed to their limits. Mitchell and Ren are about to have a peaceful weekend alone in the Catskillsthat is until they pick up and befriend a mysterious hitchhiker, Lyle. Soon, Mitchell and Ren's plans for a quiet vacation are a distant memory-as things go from bad to worse and straight to hell-and their marriage is crumbling under Lyle's overshadowing presence.
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United States Premiere It's no wonder why INerTia walked away with the Best First Feature Award from the Toronto Film Festival. Filled with sly humor and keen observation on the toils of modern romance, Sean Garrity's debut feature is a captivating and assured comedy about restlessness, infidelity, desire, and regret. A four-sided love triangle forms as a group of 20-somethings open doors that are best left closed. Joseph cannot let go of Laura; Laura is interested in the very married Bruce; Bruce is after Joseph's cousin, Alex; and Alexwell, like all 19-years-olds, she has other plans.
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United States Premiere A weekend in the country isn't usually a nerve-wracking experience. Not so in Honolulu. It just so happens that in these restless lives, pandemonium is just a heartbeat away. Seven up-and-coming German directors, including Academy Award winner Florian Gallenberger (Quiero Ser, also in this year's shorts programs), present a light and breezy provincial patchwork. Rarely has the conflict between youth angst and comic abandon, the drab reality and willful dreaming been so briskly, so exuberantly balanced.
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World Premiere Doug Finelli's feature debut is a delightfully sexy comedy about love, marriage, friendship, and wife swapping. The late '70s: a time of experimentation and sexual freedom. For twelve-year-olds Steve and Eric, the prospects for their future seem limitless. Not quite. A little over 18 years later, Steve and Eric are average guys with average wives in the small town of Freehold, and they have yet to make any kind of mark.
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World Premiere Director Noah Nuer presents a heartwarming comedy about two young Parisians who come together to improve each other's lives. Get a Way urges its characters and its viewers to change the course of their future-to stop hiding from life and start embracing it. Didier is a disaffected young man with no apparent direction and a tenuous relationship with his uptight sister, Claire. After a bad encounter with his absent father, Didier nearly runs his van into Anne, a student upset about failing her exams and at odds with her strict parents.
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United States Premiere Winner - FIPRESCI (International Film Critics' Federation) Prize at the 25th Hong Kong Film Festival. Three years ago, Tam received a postcard from his older brother, sent from a village in the westernmost reaches of the Qinghai highlands on the Tibetan border. Since then, nothing. Now, Tam's decided to leave Hong Kong to find his brother, but what starts off as a search for his loved one becomes much more; and what Tam finds (and doesn't find) and learns reveals much more than simply the whereabouts of a peripatetic sibling.
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Northern California Premiere Mike Binder's magnificent and hilarious film, The Search for John Gissing, kicks off Cinequest 12 with a bang! Written and directed by the award-winning Binder (HBO's The Mind of the Married Man) and starring Binder, Janeane Garofalo (Truth About Cats and Dogs), and Alan Rickman (Die Hard, Harry Potter, Galaxy Quest), The Search for John Gissing provides the perfect opening to Cinequest's finest line-up yet. Cinequest is honored to have director/writer Mike Binder, producer Jack Binder, and editor Roger Nygard join us for the event.
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California Premiere At 17-years-old, Naomi is a typical teenage girl of modern Nagoya, with short dyed hair and cell phone attached. When Naomi's parents separate, she is sent to the country to work in her aunt's hotel. There she reacquaints herself with an aging relative, Mrs. Koide, of whom she had been very fond as a little girl. Mrs. Koide, however, suffering from Alzheimer's, doesn't remember Naomi. Yet they find they are more alike than they are different-each a mirror of the other.
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United States Premiere Gregor is a laconic Berlin radio host with a "thing" for Tim Hardin songs and an obsession with his former lover. Mai is a happy-go-lucky twenty-something romantic in love with her roommate's boyfriend who looks at her like a sister. About the only thing Mai and Gregor have in common is an unrequited love. After barely escaping a near fatal car accident, Mai notices Gregor's signature Tim Hardin song on the radio. This spurs her to attempt to contact Gregor, which she does via the Internet.