An inside look at the emergence of the ‘pickup’ industry - a business where self-styled seduction coaches travel the world, charging a small fortune to teach men skills they claim will guarantee them success with women.
It can be a highly lucrative occupation, with many companies earning millions of dollars each year. But, it is also an industry rife with controversy and scandal; several teachers have been deported from countries for their contentious methodologies, and pickup businesses are often the subject of fierce public criticism.
Despite this, men the world over collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars to attend seminars, download online courses and have one-on-one coaching sessions with instructors they feel can give them the dating life of their dreams. In the minds of students, many of these instructors become more than just teachers - they become idols.
From the glossy exterior, where courses are packaged as self-improvement, to the dark underbelly of sexual assault, pyramid scheme marketing and secret collusion, this documentary pulls back the curtain to reveal a world that is fascinating and horrific in equal measure.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - Making Believe - World premiere
In 2002 in Bojayá, Colombia 79 people died when The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) launched a homemade mortar onto a church where many were hiding from crossfire between the left-wing FARC and right-wing paramilitaries. Leyner Palacios survived, but 28 of his family members did not. The Bojayá massacre was one of the worst atrocities in Colombia’s 50 year-long conflict.
When peace between the government and the FARC was signed in 2016, after decades of conflict, Leyner made it his mission to ensure the peace deal was implemented to his people’s benefit, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Capturing one victim’s incredible struggle for justice, this film follows the process of identifying the dead of Bojayá during the faltering implementation of the controversial peace accords.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - World Showcase - World premiere
Kaden is a world-class ski jumper in Whistler, Canada, unexpectedly presented with the chance of reconnecting with his teenage sweetheart. Khai is a corporate executive in Shanghai, China, faced with the fact that the girl he fantasizes about on the internet has just started working in his office. The two men go about their lives, without knowing that they are connected. When one is awake, the other is asleep. They dream each other. They are, in some strange way, the same person. The question is what happens if they were ever to meet….
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2019 - Viewpoints - World premiere
ABDUCTION is a story of Kevin a broken man who lost his son Harvey 5 years ago under mysterious circumstances, along with 5 other children from the same area. Then more recently lost his loving wife Lindsey who had turn to alcohol after the disappearance of their only child. Lindsey had asked Harvey to get some wood from the log storage box from in the garden when he vanished and never forgave herself. Now 2019, Kevin hears a knock on the back door to his shock it's Harvey he looks exactly the same as the night he vanished wearing the same clothes. The other children also appear from where they were last seen and not one of them has any recollection of where they've been for the past 5 years. To him it seems like just a couple of minutes have past. Back in 2014 when the children disappeared a paedophile that had been rehabilitated into the village community without the locals knowledge but when they community finds out they start a witch hunt to find him. The police are under pressure from the local community arrest and charge him with the kidnapping and murders of all the children. Kevin along with the other parents is interviewed and recalls the events of the night Harvey vanished telling the reporter what his wife witnessed that night and to the day she died talked about bright blue lights in the nights sky which nobody believed. The children are returned to their families to try and rebuild their life's in the community of Baildon but strange things start to happen the children display special abilities people start vanishing without a trace.
A film location finder is shown around a repossessed, crumbling French château. Over the course of the afternoon, he slowly falls for both the place and the owner’s flirtatious representative, as she recounts the story of a famous book set there. But is their present-tense connection for real, or just a projection of the book’s 17th Century characters?
Set on the island planet of Kairos Linea, ELEVEN ELEVEN is a multi-linear narrative that places users in the center of the action as its inhabitants count down the final 11 minutes and 11 seconds to an extinction-level event. The only guarantee for survival is aboard a rescue ship that will launch just before the clock hits zero, transporting a lucky few to the safety of a floating ark in the sky. The narrative plays out in real-time and focuses on six main characters whose stories intersect as they try to make it to the ship, or face the reality of what could be their final moments.
Official Selection SXSW 2019 - Virtual Cinema Competition - World premiere
In a perfect town filled with perfect families, twelve-year-old Justin Whitter has gone missing. Greg Harper, lead investigator on the case, struggles to balance the pressures of the investigation which has brought to attention a similar case thought to be buried in the past, while finding a way to forgive his well-heeled wife, Jackie, for a recent infidelity. Great strain is put on the family as Jackie’s guilt slowly gnaws away at her grip on reality, and when a malicious presence manifests itself and puts their young son, Connor, in mortal danger, the cold, hard truth about evil in the Harper household is finally uncovered.
Official Selection SXSW 2019 - Midnighters - World premiere
In England banger racing isn't just a sport, but a way of life. JUNIOR BANGERS follows 11 year olds Finn and Harley through a cold winter race day in Birmingham.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Thrill Strand - European premiere
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - Documentary Shorts Program - Nominated, Short Film Grand Jury Prize
A short tale on the face of masculinity, portrayed by young men who grow up in inner city environments. Where the iconic ‘screwface’ is more than just an expression, it’s a matter of life and death.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Laugh Strand
As much a film project and an experiment in collaboration as it is a set of fragments drawn from a reimagined cosmos. These fragments, sounds, and stories help us convey the experiential moment of entanglement, or rather, they describe an entangled moment prior to separation, what we call “Deep Implicancy”.
One such story we follow is water, both as it phases transitions with and into other matter including life, but also as it combines disparate geographies, bodies of/in water, and four islands within them – Lesvos, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Tiwi.
Through a series of experimental migrations and elemental crossings we begin to question the form of the universal human, its calcified and exceptional origins, and in particular its ethical program. Wandering and wondering through a transformative figuring of justice, we ask, what if our image of the world recalled phase instead of measure? And what becomes of ethics if we let go of value? (Arjuna Neuman, Denise Ferreira da Silva)
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Forum Expanded Exhibition - Group Exhibition at Betonhalle - World premiere
Diana must live with the pain of abandonment by fiancé Robert, but Robert must face Diana's just wrath. A cycle of unexpected turns is unleashed and Diana’s actions backfire. Can she save herself from the consequences of her wrath against Robert?
