The Plain

YOUNG LIONS OF GYPSY takes us through a night in the life of Pio, a young Romani boy living in southern Italy.

Pio Amato, a 14 year-old member of a small Romani community in southern Italian town of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, is in a hurry to grow up. Pio follows his older brother Cosimo everywhere and from him he learns how to hustle and how to navigate the streets of his hometown. One night Pio sets out to prove to his brother that he is as good or better than him but, when things go wrong, a series of events will forever change the way he sees the world.

The Guerrasio family and friends gather to celebrate Claudio and Carmela’s oldest daughter’s 18th birthday. There is a healthy rivalry between the birthday girl and her 15-year-old sister Chiara as they compete on the dancefloor. It is a happy occasion, and the close-knit family are on top form. However, everything changes the next day when the father disappears. Chiara, unconvinced by the cover story, starts to investigate. As she gets closer to the truth, she is forced to decide what kind of future she wants for herself.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

Chiara feels that there is something wrong. She has a strange feeling she cannot explain to her mother or sister. During the night, after overhearing a heated argument between her parents and witnessing something shocking, her world is overturned and her safety net crumbles. Reality and dreams start to blur and Chiara’s life will never be the same.

Khalid, a charismatic big dreamer from Brooklyn, with no follow-thru gets stuck in a small town on the Black Sea after chasing an opportunity for money that goes wrong. Being the only black guy in the town, he quickly becomes the center of the town’s attention. His New York City street bop is all he has to survive. In his pursuit to get home he finds connection in a way he never expected with a local woman. Together they make their small dreams big.

The interlocking stories of two Lakota boys growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation. At 23, Bill just wants to make something of himself. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Matho can’t wait to become a man. Bound by their shared search for belonging, each of the boys grapple with identity, family, and loss, as they navigate their unique paths to manhood.

Two boys and close family friends, Jeremy and Alphonse, American and French, spend a few weeks together in Jeremy’s house in Brooklyn. Jeremy is confused about his understanding of the friendship, while obsessed with the ducks in the Prospect Park’s lake and finishing a school paper about their migration. Alphonse likes to ride bicycles and doesn’t want to leave town. The ducks inevitably leave, Alphonse goes back to Paris, and Jeremy stays in his house, but all of them depart to something new.

In the rugged, fog-shrouded mountains of Aspromonte, Italy, an archaeologist and his assistants are seeking an ancient treasure. But their digs release mysterious mythological creatures who will change the lives of the inhabitants of this remote village forever.