Portraits from a Fire

Student Eric kills time by spying on his neighbors. Compulsively taking notes on everything within binocular range from his bedroom window, he harasses his neighbors by sending unsigned notes and making their private affairs public. When they discover his identity and draw him in, will this release him from his solitude, or confirm in his mind that he will always be the outsider?

This semi-autobiographical film by Barry Levinson follows various members of the Kurtzman clan, a Jewish family living in suburban Baltimore during the 1950s. As teenaged Ben completes high school, he falls for Sylvia, a black classmate, creating inevitable tensions. Meanwhile, Ben's brother, Van, attends college and becomes smitten with a mysterious woman while their father tries to maintain his burlesque business.

More interested in romance than sex, "Formula 17" swoons with youthful innocence. Naive country-boy Tien-Tsai travels to Taipei, where his quest to lose his virginity is impeded by his insistence on finding true love first. The film's Chinese title translates as "17-Year-Old's World" which accurately describes its niche.

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl - and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation and guilt - as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble. As suburban prejudices close around them, family loves and loyalties are tested in the ever-escalating dramatic turns of Alain Berliner's critically acclaimed first feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and a favorite at festivals around the world, this unique film experience delivers magic of the rarest sort through a story of difference, rejection, and childlike faith in miracles.

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.

A female ex-con falls in love and hesitates to reveal her past.

The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.

Eden is a coming-of-age film about a Protestant Confirmation camp on a summer’s week, set in the archipelago of Helsinki. Aliisa is the intellectually confident non-believer, Jenna is the queen bee and Panu is the scared bird. The experience of these teenagers is affected by Tiina, a young and eager priest.

In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.