• 2020

    2020 is the year in which everything seems to have stopped.
    However, Life always has different plans.
    Screening

  • ALBERTO AND THE CONCRETE JUNGLE

    A fun and energetic adventure through the streets of NYC, as Alberto does his best to escape an absurdly, unyielding city. With a loose 70s-era Cassavetes energy, a film that transforms the adventure genre into something a bit Kafkaesque.

    Screening

  • AMERICAN THIEF

    A teen hacker seeking revenge for his father’s murder becomes a pawn in a plot to derail the 2016 presidential elections.

    Screening

  • ANGEL

    Capturing people and places from all corners of the North East of England, Angel weaves together six stories about the unsung heroes and icons in the region.
    Screening

  • ANYWHERE BUT HERE

    Anywhere But Here (2021) is a metacommentary film about wanting to go places and see new faces, but being prevented from doing so by the pandemic. The narrator unravels a bittersweet resolution in the self-reflexive filmmaking process as we dive deeper into her dreamscape.
    Screening

  • APOLLO’S LETTERS

    Set in 1993, a young sociopathic aristocrat sends letters to newspapers describing his ideological killings, until he meets his late Father’s executor of wills – a young mysterious woman who takes him by surprise.
    Screening

  • BARRY & JOAN

    A joyful insight into the creative world of Barry and Joan Grantham, two British eccentrics who have kept the skills of vaudeville alive for over seventy years. Since becoming stage-struck lovers in 1948, Barry and Joan have taught, danced and acted alongside the greats of British film and theatre.

    Screening

  • BIN DAY

    Michelle struggles to confront her all consuming ex-boyfriend as she takes the bins out on what’s supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
    Screening

  • CONNECTION

    Eleri has been caring for her mum, Luned, since she was a child. But both have become so invested in their reversed roles of parent and child, that they’ve lost sight of one another and the true connection between them.
    Screening

  • COUNTRY OF HOTELS

    A room in an anonymous hotel has a profoundly dark effect on all who stay there.

    Screening

  • DEAR EDUARDO

    On a suburban street, a battle of wills unfolds between a man, a postwoman and an elderly lady. The man must make a stand to reclaim his letterbox. ‘Dear Eduardo’ is a short comedy-drama about a man on the edge … and a LOT of letters!
    Screening

  • CUTIES

    A hand-drawn sequential telling of human history in all its horror and glory, culminating in our next evolutionary leap. Cuties explores the elusive beauty in how we as a species continue forward in spite of our proclivity for destruction.

     

    Screening

  • DIVERSITY

    The film addresses an important, highly topical theme – diversity. It wants to and is intended to initiate debate. Among other things, it deals with prejudices in religious views of life.
    Screening

  • DELETED

    A short documentary following the last 5 hours of a 59-years-old man, Ahmed before becoming homeless due to the late payments and bureaucracy by the Department for Work and Pensions.
    Screening

  • EVERYONE HAS MY JACKET

    Short animation about fashion, gender dysphoria and acceptance; as we follow a singular protagonist narrating an internal struggle when a brown corduroy jacket makes its way into his closet.

    Screening

  • DOGWOOD

    Martin (Joe Newton) is a casualty of society. He is under appreciated and overworked as a salary man in the city. With the mounting pressure on his shoulders, he experiences a breakdown at work, and loses his job, and decides to go and live off grid in the woods.

    Screening

  • FLY HOME

    A lonely man working on a deep space transmission station is pestered by a fly that has appeared onboard.
    Screening

  • FORGET ME NOT

    Sally suffers from dementia, a regularly misunderstood and mistreated illness. She believes she is in her prime, enjoying her twenties as a soon-to-be mother with her best friend, Isabel, by her side.
    Screening

  • FRASER SYNDROME & ME

    Filmmaker Kyle Anne Grendys, is only the 75th person to be born with the rare, recessive gene disorder called Fraser Syndrome.
    Having always felt alone in the world, she sets out on a journey to find her community and finally meets others just like her.
    Screening

  • GIVE THEM WINGS

    ‘Give Them Wings’ is based on the true story of Paul Hodgson, a football fan with a disability.

    Screening

  • HOPPER & GUNDEL RIVER POLICE

    Hopper and Gundel are two River Police who assumed their job would involve more crime fighting and life saving than boat maintenance and ferrying real detectives about.
    They are the brunt of their land-based peers’ jokes, namely Officer Cook but maybe today is their big chance to prove themselves. Or not.
    Screening

  • GREAT NORTH: A RUN. A RIVER. A REGION

    GREAT NORTH: A Run, A River, A Region’ tells the story of the Great North Run in the context of the changing social, cultural and industrial landscape of the North East.

    Screening

  • INTERRUPTIONS

    Jessica bumps into a man with half a million pounds in cash, Paul attempts a FaceTime date in a restaurant, and Mick the gangster debates America’s gun laws.
    Screening

  • JUMP

    Abandoned by his parents, a boy takes care of his younger brother Mattie as they fend for themselves in a council house in Sheffield. When the authorities come to take Mattie away, a desperation to retain control forces the boy to take Mattie and go on the run. Written entirely in rhyming verse.
    Screening

  • KAPANA

    A rare LGBTQ film from Namibia, a country where gay relationships are stigmatised. Two lives intersect: George and Simeon. Two secrets. One unlikely meeting in a bar.

    Screening

  • KORE

    A young girl has developed a new type of mutation which is deteriorating her body. As her condition gets worse, she discusses with a former surgeon the nature of her disease and how to deal with it.
    Screening

  • LA FACE CACHEE DES ENERGIES VERTES

    Green but polluting technologies, recycling impossible: this vast survey carried out around the world reveals the perverse effects of clean solutions to achieve the energy transition.

    Screening

  • LOBSTER

    OK, so Cam’s hungover, lost, vomit-stained, dealing with a very rude visitor, and totally in the dark. On the other hand, er, claw, she has an advantage that many Aussies can only dream about.
    Screening

  • MAJORITY

    Single mother and immigrant Sonia Diaconescu works at a sheltered accommodation scheme. A resident of the scheme has made an official complaint against her, rousing the elderly community into a mob of angry and fearful citizens whose intolerance is palpable.

    Screening

  • MAM

    An adaptation of the play ‘How Did We Get To This Point?’, ‘Mam’ is set in the Northern social club and gives a window into the life of one particular barmaid.
    Screening

  • N’ANGA

    A not so traditional tale tangled with post-modern diasporic identities. N’anga explores Zimbabwean traditional spirituality and Eurocentric environments. The story is that of family and the lengths that we will always go to for those we love, but what does that mean when you are stuck between identities.
    Screening

  • ME TO PLAY

    As their bodies give way to Parkinson’s disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final Off-Broadway production of Beckett’s Endgame, the play that posits, ’there’s nothing funnier than unhappiness’.

    Screening

  • PART OF ME

    Recently married couple Lucy and Christopher are coping with their grief in opposite ways after the stillbirth of their child. Christopher just wants life to continue as normal but Lucy sees evidence of the continued presence of her child everywhere.
    Screening

  • NOW IS NOT THE BEST TIME

    Alisa gets a chance to win $50,000 by making a half-court shot at a Knicks game but her anxiety quickly derails her when she learns the contest is going to be on TV.

    Screening

  • PRANGOVER

    Boy meets Girl but with no dialogue or contraception
    Screening

  • RAT

    An agoraphobic woman trapped in a toxic marriage, struggles with a rat problem.
    Screening

  • REPLY TO A LETTER FROM

    ‘Reply to a letter from…’is the story of  the close relationship between IG Farben (now Bayer) and the Nazi State. Shot in Auschwitz it reveals that that Auschwitz was in part a private enterprise run by the German chemical industry, a fact history is keen to gloss over.  It is also a meditation on the collusion of Governments and Big Corporations.

    Screening

  • SPIDER FLY

    At the scene of a hit and run, Private Investigator I.B. Pillock brings his own twisted logic to solving the case.
    Screening

  • STORIES OF THE HEART

    Stories of the Heart is an enigmatic tone poem in celebration of the heart, from the people who can see right into it: A heart surgeon, a musician and a philosopher.
    Screening
    • 21/11/2021 11:00 am

  • STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER

    Steven Shepherd’s short life beheld just one very special day amidst his world of total and utter torment. He lived with his Grannie Nellie, who loved and cared for him dearly. The best day of his life was picking strawberries in the summer of 1966 because he had escaped the school bullies. He would return there just months later to stay for much longer.
    Screening

  • TAKE THE CHOCOLATE

    It’s a story of two year old girl who likes a boy and wants to make him her friend. He is not interested but she wouldn’t give up till he is friends with her.
    Screening

  • THE BYKER LION

    Byker Lion shares the stories of Mark’s youth growing up in Byker (North East England) and is sprinkled with good old fashioned Geordie humour.
    Screening

  • THE FIRST GIRL I LOVED 喜歡妳是妳

    A story of two high school girls that fall in love but encounter boundaries.

    Screening

  • THE FORBIDDEN STRINGS

    Four young Afghan immigrants in Iran have formed a rock band which has never been allowed to perform. Now they’ve got the chance to play in their homeland, they’re not going to let anything stop them. Moments of joy compete with sobering reality.

    Screening

  • THE GESTURE AND THE WORD

    A lonely postman secretly recreates postcards for a woman on his postal route when her boyfriend’s homemade postcards stop arriving from his travels around the world.

    Screening

  • THE PLUGS

    A look into the world of sneaker reselling where Teenagers in the UK are buying and then reselling trainers for up to £60,000 a pair.
    Screening

  • THE SANDS OF TIME

    A Time Portal in the Sands Brings a Young Couple Together
    Screening

  • THE SECRET LIFE OF TOM LIGHTFOOT

    Tom is anxious, he holds a secret in his human heart, a wing beat and a flutter and its bursting to take flight.The Secret Life of Tom Lightfoot is a tale of magical realism to be witnessed and shared. It is a tale of healing revealing how we can learn to live with the secrets of our more than human hearts.

    Screening

  • THE SHADED FEST

    You always fear that someone sees through you and you are exposed. Or that no-one sees you.
    Screening

  • THE SPACE BETWEEN WORDS

    Five years after the death of her wife an unassuming bookstore owner attempts to accept new love when a chance encounter reawakens buried feelings.

    Screening

  • THE WRITING BOX

    In the late 1930s, a boarding school bully schemes and dreams her way from the gloom of England to the promises of colonial India.
    Screening

  • THEM & US

    Them and Us open the stories of three different groups of students in rural middle school in China.
    Screening

  • THIS IS ZOE

    Zoe’s reserved nature speaks volumes when her familiar, unwanted inner critic comes out to play.
    Screening

  • TICKING BOXES

    Matt, a stereotypical hetero white male, feels he has life figured out by following the status quo. This all changes when he meets Ryan and the illusion of his idyllic life begins to crumble.
    Screening

  • TIM

    Dark but humorous. Sinister but funny. Tim is the short film that sits somewhere between Reservoir Dogs and Only Fools and Horses.

    Screening

  • TOSSERS

    Tynemouth legend knows of a group of swimmers who brave the icy waters of the North East coast each weekend – all year round. Meet the ‘Tynemouth Outdoor Swimmers’…
    Screening

  • TIME AND TIDE

    The beaches of Hartlepool are where seacoalers have worked and prospered for centuries. Steve and Keith are the last two seacoalers working today, and despite the government phasing out coal in under two years’ time, they remain proud of their craft and the life it has given them.

     

    Screening

  • TRANSMISSION

    UFOs? Alien abduction? A boy finds the key to extraterrestrial connection but loses his brother in the process. Can he re-connect to get him back?
    Screening

  • TRUTH: 1 NIGHT, 1 ROOM, 3 BADDEST BITCHES

    Japan-set battle-royale comedy over a vial of sperm is centered around three women on the verge of a nervous breakdown from hearing their biological clock ticking away; a doctor and manager of a sperm bank Sana Kobayashi, a single-mother Maron Kuribayashi, and an alluring receptionist Mayumi Kujyo.

    Screening

  • UNCIVILIZED

    A young man sets off to the forest in search of the simple life of ‘uncivilized’ man, but when Category 5 Hurricane Maria strikes his island, his project takes on new meaning as everyone is sent back to ‘primitive living’.

    Screening

  • WAITING GAMES

    An anxious single Mum and her young daughter connect whilst waiting for their son and brother, but it’s someone else who they’re really hoping for.

    Screening

  • WHEN THE WEST IS DONE WITH YOU

    Trust fund baby Robert gets himself in hot water with a mysterious American who helps you kill people for a price.
    Written and Directed by Phillip James Rouse; When The West is Done With You deals with the toxic masculinity that pervades our society and how easily this can be exploited for financial gain.
    Screening

  • WHEN WINTER COMES

    Music video by Paul McCartney performing Winter Bird / When Winter Comes.

    Screening

  • ZOE & BRYN

    Two young women meet and over the course of one evening develop a connection that neither was expecting.
    Screening

  • POPS

    How would you react if your father’s last wish was a little bit out there? For siblings Roz and Elli, it becomes a battleground for who will determine their pop’s final journey. POPS is a Jewish comedy drama about family, religion and how we choose to honour a life well-lived.
    Screening

  • MARLENE SUPER HERO

    Paris, by night, under Alexander III bridge… Maxime, eleven years old, wants to die..Marlene, a strange woman, with a super hero suit catches her: Maxime doesn’t want any help. But Marlene has a job to do and she always does her job. She absolutely wants to know why a child wants to die ? Maxime finally confesses, her parents reject her trans identity.
    Screening

  • CONSECRATED VIRGINS

    Consecrated Virgins live in the world without being in the world. They have a job, colleagues, friends, but they live in chastity. Alone. Magali is a consecrated virgin.In her profession of osteopathy, she touches the bodies and heals them.There is no outward sign of the life she is living.
    However, Magali wears a ring. She wears the ring of the bride.
    Screening

  • FUCK THE PANTIES

    Clara, a 23-year-old bisexual girl, lives in a flat with her friend Helena. She wants to find love so she starts going on dates, but they always turn out very surreal and Clara ends up getting bored of them. Even so, she doesn’t give up and continues to meet people in an addictive way until she hits rock bottom and finds herself on a date that is beyond her. One day when she is hanging out her panties, she is surprised by what she discovers.

    Screening