My Name Ain't Suzie

Worldly Desires

2005

One of three films commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2005. A couple escaped their family to look for a spiritual tree in the jungle. There is a song at night, a song that spoke about an innocent idea of love and a quest for happiness. Worldly Desires is an experimental project where I invited a filmmaker friend, Pimpaka Towira, to shoot the love story by day and the song by night. The story, Deep Red Bloody Night, was written by my assistant who wanted to reprise a forbidden love story in a more romantic time in the past. I picked a pop song, Will I be Lucky? to convey a sense of guiltless freedom one feels when being hit by love. The video is a little simulation of manners, dedicated to the memories of filmmaking in the jungle during the year 2001-2005. -Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Radiance

1998

After the death of their mother, three estranged sisters return to their childhood home.

Good Vibrations

2012

The story of music legend Terri Hooley, a key figure in Belfast's punk rock scene. Hooley founded the Good Vibrations store from which a record label sprung, representing bands such as The Undertones, Rudi and The Outcasts.

Breaking Horizons

2012

“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” Lara can hardly believe what the doctor has just told her. The 25-year-old spends her nights hanging around Berlin with best friend Nora, having lost interest in her architectural studies long ago. She has no idea what to do with her life – she does a lot, but nothing properly. She now finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. Nora is thrilled by the news though, proclaiming: “we’re having a baby!” After some initial doubts, Lara too begins to see her pregnancy as a chance. Together with Nora, she sets about painting the nursery and goes in search of the baby’s father. Then the gynaecologist gives Lara some bad news…

Avanti

2012

What does ‘normal’ actually mean? And what is ‘crazy’? Everybody attempts to convince Léa that her mother, Suzanne, is mentally ill. Her father wants to see her returned to the psychiatric clinic, but Léa refuses to see her mother in the same light: Suzanne is happy – even if she doesn’t act like others expect her to. She appears to live a joyfully infantile existence after calmly letting go of life’s pressures. Léa captures her mother’s life on film and focuses her attention on examining the old super-8 films from the family archives. When she is left to drive her mother back to the clinic after a weekend at home, Léa grabs her opportunity: She turns the car around and whisks Suzanne off on a journey; a road trip without the judgements of others. AVANTI follows a mother-daughter relationship with an ease and depth that highlights the complexity of the emotional ties within a family.

No Exit

1954

The scene is a tawdry hotel room in Limbo, where several damned souls are gathered. At first, the group fails to comprehend where they are or why they're there. When the horrible truth dawns upon them, they carp and snipe at one another, blaming everyone but themselves for their dismal fate.

Transpapa

2012

Fifteen-year-old Maren wants to get away – far away. Aside from all the boys thinking she’s frigid, her recently love-struck mother is driving her round the twist. But she also has a father who she hasn’t seen for years. When Maren decides to get in touch with him, her mother finally spills the beans: He now goes by the name of Sophia and lives as a woman – just what she needs! Irrespective of her vexation, Maren risks a meeting and finds in Sophia a person just as hormonal and puerile as herself – a person who would actually prefer to be her best friend, at best even her mother. Can Maren accept that this life makes her father happy? TRANSPAPA is a compassionate and funny story of gender role-breaking, tolerance and the search for identity.

Shirin's Wedding

1976

In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small village in Turkey in search of him.

Weihnachten in Sommerby

Invalid Date

A dream come true for Martha, Mikkel, and Mats: they get to celebrate Christmas in Sommerby. They travel together to visit Grandma Inge, with their parents planning to join them shortly before Christmas. But then everything turns out differently than expected...

Bliss

2012

Two young people in Berlin, a refugee and a homeless punk, form a relationship.

Diary for My Loves

1987

A continuation of "Diary for My Children," the film picks up in 1950, when Juli, the diarist, is 18 and determined to become a movie director.

Clara Campoamor, the Neglected Woman

2011

Spain, 1931. Under the Second Republic, women are eligible, but cannot vote. Victoria Kent and Clara Campoamor, the first women in the Spanish Parliament, intend to fight for women's rights, and Clara knows that the first step is to get the women's vote approved…

An Officer and a Murderer

2012

The true story of Colonel Russell Williams, one Canada’s most powerful and respected Air Force Officers, who committed numerous brutal crimes and was eventually brought down by a tenacious small town police detective.

Personal Effects

2006

At 18, fresh from high school, Marina, Ignacio, Adam and Mimi, school mates bonded by fate, shared a dream about adult life, a dream of fame, success, perfect skin and that one endless, true love that, surely, was waiting just around the corner for each one of them. But 30's arrived, and none of the sweet promises of youth was fulfilled. Alone, failed and frustrated, all four are forced to stop and look around to try to understand where it all went wrong, and find an emergency fix for their lives, before it's too late, and happiness escapes through their fingers forever. Secondary Effects is the bitter coming of age comedy that follows their steps in the search for lost dreams, lost hair and good sex, at least, if true love turns out to be a mirage.

Ain't Scared

2007