If Dreams Were Lightning

Mar is ready to leave the tiny island of Malta behind, and her estranged mother's death gives her the perfect way out: an inheritance of valuable farmland that she can sell. But when greedy relatives contest her claim, Mar's plans hit a snag. As she fights to secure her future, Mar meets Nenu, a spirited troubadour whose vibrant folk songs, rooted in Malta's ancient għana tradition, awaken emotions she's long buried.

Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.

Suddenly left without his trusted caretaker, Ptolemy Grey is assigned to the care of orphaned teenager Robyn. When they learn about a treatment that will restore Ptolemy’s dementia-addled memories, it begins a journey toward shocking truths.

A plastic bag, thrown out in the trash, attempts to find his way back to his owner and along the way discovers the world.

As a patriarchal family yearns for the birth of a son to continue their family line, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for its transgender starlet.

The Treadstone project, having created super spy Jason Bourne, turns its attention on a new protocol to develop unstoppable superhuman assassins.

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

It is September 11, 2001, and a young man goes missing in New York. Because of his eastern name and his Islamic religion, he is suspected of being involved in the World Trade Center attack. The FBI inquire about him. The neighbors of his family show their disapproval. His family hold out hope that he will be found and exonerated. (Originally appeared as a segment of the omnibus film 11’09”01—September 11, but later presented as a separate short film.)

An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller.

Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.

A man planning to commit suicide hires a taxi driver to take him to his jumping-off point.

Jesmark, a struggling fisherman on the island of Malta, is forced to turn his back on generations of tradition and risk everything by entering the world of black market fishing to provide for his girlfriend and newborn baby.

After his family is evicted from their home, proud and desperate construction worker Dennis Nash tries to win his home back by striking a deal with the devil and working for Rick Carver, the corrupt real estate broker who evicted him.

Backgammon tells the tale of a young Iranian American girl who desperately wants to play backgammon with her stubborn grandfather who has recently arrived from Iran. Within the circle of a family gathering, the film brings together a subtle yet compelling story of generational conflicts and cultural identity.

Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.

In 1969, bankrupt pizzeria owner Richard Davis invented the modern-day bulletproof vest. To prove that it worked, he shot himself — point-blank — 192 times.