Pochcánek

Early spring, 2022. Seventeen (or more) friends live through what they don't know will be a quick last few months of school, facing their final exams, closing activities, but more importantly the idea that they may never see each other again. Chapters I and II see the craziness mixed with the sense of possible loss of a friendship that surfaced quickly and may be fading all too soon.

With an experimental treatment looming to cure her aggressive cancer, Jamie ventures to the lake where her and her girlfriend, Grace, fell in love, fearful it will be the last time she ever sees it.

As her adolescence gives way to the obligations of motherhood, troubled Gemma matures in Motherwell, her Scottish hometown, heavily dependent on the steel industry. Unfortunately for her, her hedonistic way of understanding the world does not fit in with the philosophy of the rest of the villagers, so trouble soon follows.

Documentary about a group of young idealistic friends in their squat in Amsterdam. Chased by the police and the press, they moved from squat to squat, with a clear message: don't make the city too expensive for the new generation of Amsterdammers. But living with such a large group and the flaws of the squat begin to take their toll. When the squatters collective falls apart halfway through the film, the filmmaker is left disillusioned and decides to confront the young squatters with her feelings of disappointment.

Four precocious preteens perfect their lip-synching and runway walks in anticipation of the biggest drag performance of their lives at Montreal Pride, in this fierce and joyous celebration of acceptance and self-discovery.

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

On the Guajira peninsula in northern Columbia the old traditions of the indigenous Wayuu still hold sway. As soon as they begin menstruating, young women have to go and spend a year in a simple hut where only a few women are allowed to visit them. Contact with men is taboo. The grandmother is chiefly responsible for preparing the girl for her role as a woman during this period of seclusion. Pili is 12 years old when, for her grandmother's sake, she decides to follow this custom. But does she really know what she is taking on?

A lonely 40-year-old man sits on the balcony of a Finnish apartment building. Joonas Berghäll has learned that he will die in 14 years’ time, unless he changes his way of living or attitude towards life. Joonas wants to make a film about the state of wellbeing of Finnish men, drawing from his own experiences and mirroring the society at large. The film is built around six stories. It starts with the context of school and proceeds through the contexts of military service, custody battle, burnout and substance abuse to end on the subject of premature death caused by health problems.

For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.

A universal underdog tale with its own unique lens. Out of the ashes of loss, can one man use mixed martial arts to save young people from the toughest parts of our society? Zero opportunity, poverty and crime are common themes in the housing estates of Sunderland, North East England. A once proud region of industry, now a wasteland scattered with the relics of the past, as generations of government continue to neglect it.

In this modern, coming of age documentary, Naomi, Jojo and Arham grapple with economic divides, gender roles, and family dynamics while competing in the fastest growing high school sport in the country: girl’s wrestling.