I Used to Be Darker

Chronicles two summer days in the life of a young recent family: Lena, 17, and Joe, 20, two recent and accidental parents residing in a diverse suburban neighborhood in northeast Baltimore City.

Friends and family of Cory, a young man who has died of an overdose, gather at a Baltimore-area karaoke bar for his wake and compare stories about him. Gradually, as it becomes clear that there are many holes in their recollections about Cory, they fill in the blanks by talking about things that reveal aspects of their own lives. Among those mourning him and searching for meaning are his cousin Jenny, his sister Zoe and his brother James.

An unconventional portrayal of several young women witnessed in immersive yet indeterminate states: within their bodies, among their friends and lovers, and ultimately in a culture of economic and spiritual recession. Obliquely inspired by Bela Bartok’s sole opera, Bluebeard’s Castle.

Keith, a small-time drug dealer, is under house arrest at the home of his father in Baltimore. He re-enters a community scarred by unemployment, neglect and deeply entrenched segregation. There, he pushes back against his surrounding limitations as he tries to find a way out of his own internal prison.

Esther, an 18 year-old from the North of Mexico, wakes up in Mexico City overwhelmed and alone. She completes her morning rituals and leaves her apartment to look for work. Wandering the city streets, she attempts to connect with strangers she meets, including a young delivery man who she follows discreetly to the house of a mysterious woman. There, Esther finds a kindred spirit and a companion for the end of the world.

A character study as well as a meditation on communication, creativity, and physical space, Take What You Can Carry is a picture of a young woman seen through the interiors she occupies and the company she keeps. A North American living abroad, Lilly aspires to shape an intimate and private place of her own while connecting to the world around her. When she receives a letter from home, it provides the conduit she needs to fuse her transient self with the person she's always known herself to be.

Karla arrives in Tijuana, Mexico to stay at her estranged aunt’s house a year after her father’s death. In this moment of solitude and calm, she looks up, down, inward and outward via the transpositional alchemy of text and is reminded that speaking to oneself feels like a vital human practice.

A beauty salon in a city ravaged by a mysterious disease becomes a refuge for the afflicted as they linger between life and death.

When the buffet where Zeke's mom works closes down, he's forced to entertain the wild advances of a rich regular who is weirdly and vehemently obsessed with becoming his father.

A feral prophet of gutter wisdom takes the viewer on a walking tour along the periphery of an American city while offering a frenetic retelling of the Book of Genesis.

Two parents try to keep the dad's terminal illness a secret from their daughter so that they don't spoil her plans to move to the city. The mother and father are played by a real couple, who are dealing with the man's real illness, and their daughter is played by an actress, cast to play the child they never had, but always dreamed of.