Hard Shoulder

Director: Nicholas David Lean

Year: 2012

Carl Foster, a work obsessed man, reluctantly agrees to a weekend away with his disgruntled wife and disruptive children - it’s as much as he can do to muster any kind of enthusiasm for the few days he must endure in their company. Their constant bickering finally takes its toll on Carl when they are passed, on a deserted country road, by a convoy of ‘carnival types’, who, by mischief or accident, cause Carl to swerve off the road. With rage descending Carl gets into heated exchange with the travellers. Taking an enforced stop hours later, in a small layby, the family are again affronted as their stationary vehicle is rammed by an unseen assailant in a large truck. Dazed by the impact they wake, bound and gagged, within the dreary confines of an abandoned roadside diner, with, seemingly, the same carnival types now their abductors and antagonists. As the gang demeans, insults, and tortures each of their captives in turn, it falls to Carl to free his family from their predicament. But not everything is as it seems, their environment not as tortuous as they imagined, and Carl not all that he would have us believe.

Director: Sandeep Kumar Paul

Year: 2026

Science teacher Swarna and her partner Driti move to a suburban town for a fresh start. When a student leaks intimate photos of Swarna online, school authorities turn her private life into a disciplinary issue. Official Selection Busan International Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Director: Yv Shells

Year: 2026

When Arlo arrives to find Marcus has cooked someone else’s favourite meal, a single question begins to unravel an evening that refuses to stay in the present. Through a fractured timeline set entirely within one dining room, we move between Marcus and Arlo and the relationship that came before, with Una, the woman he met at a late-night bus stop and once talked about marrying. The same table, the same chairs, the same arguments about trust, honesty and what it means to truly see someone. As the timelines bleed together, it becomes clear that Marcus has never fully left the past, and that Una’s ghost sits at every table he sets. When Arlo asks what her own favourite meal is and he cannot answer, the film’s quiet devastation lands completely. CLOCKS is a portrait of a man who loves generously but sees poorly, and the women who carry the cost. It asks what we owe the person in front of us while we are still in love with someone we lost, and whether a feeling ever truly ends.