Lingua Franca

Every summer, Belly and her family head to the Fishers’ beach house in Cousins. Every summer is the same ... until Belly turns sixteen. Relationships will be tested, painful truths will be revealed, and Belly will be forever changed. It’s a summer of first love, first heartbreak and growing up — it's the summer she turns pretty.

Tucked away in a remote forest, the convent of Adoration is inhabited by a group of nuns seeking a peaceful life of devotion and discipline, filling their days with nothing but mundane chores and prayers. But the wish for a life in isolation is threatened when President Ferdinand Marcos declares martial law, and political protests and chaos begin to infiltrate every corner of the archipelago. Suddenly, the nuns find themselves engulfed in violence and unrest that will eventually put their faith and conscience to the test.

A devout detective's faith is tested as he investigates a brutal murder that seems to be connected to an esteemed Utah family's spiral into LDS fundamentalism and their distrust in the government.

When Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco meet at college, they are at that formative age when seemingly mundane choices lead the way to irrevocable consequences. They quickly fall into an addictive entanglement that will permanently alter not only their lives, but the lives of everyone around them.

For over 85 years, steamship Ste. Claire transported generations of Detroiters to Boblo Island, an amusement park nestled in the waters between the US and Canada. When the vessel comes under threat of ruin, a doctor, psychic and amusement park fanatic unite to save their beloved steamship from the scrapyard. Interweaving local lore and mythology, "Boblo Boats" explores the whitewashed history of amusement parks and one crew's crusade to bring back the memories.

In search of her unique voice, an aspiring actress infiltrates cinema history. As she traverses time, space, and gender, she shape-shifts through Hollywood’s most iconic roles, reimagining cinematic archetypes for today.

Donna, a transgender sex worker in Manila, moves back to her small hometown in search of a new life. Once there, she reunites with her child, who knows her as his aunt, and becomes caught up in the intrigues surrounding a critical local election, working to unseat the corrupt mayor.

In 1983, French actress Maria Schneider gives an interview for the TV show Cinéma Cinémas. The conversation takes an unexpected turn when she challenges film industry practices and is asked to talk about the controversial film Last Tango in Paris (1972).

It’s California, during the Great Depression. A woman is confiding her most intimate thoughts in a church confessional, while the man on the other side listens silently and intently. But this is no ordinary religious ritual seeking salvation. The woman — a second generation Filipino farmhand — is rapt in roleplay reverie, her sensuous words aimed at her white American lover, during a historic period when such interracial relationships were forbidden by state law. The confession box transforms into a romantic time machine, ecstatic and melancholic, traveling into alternate futures. She manifests as multiple, dazzling women, and they can love freely. This is the 21st commission from Miu Miu Women's Tales​ series.

Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.

A mosaic-style comedy following the life of a woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family.

In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night -- and possibly her life.

In 1970s Manila, a jaded police detective, who, unbeknownst to her colleagues, is the mastermind behind a successful heist, is paired up with her former lover, an obsessively truth-seeking detective, to crack the very crime that she orchestrated.

1617, Las Islas Filipinas. The Spanish friar, Padre Enciso, the encomendero of one of the islands in Las Islas Filipinas, rules with unrelenting toughness and insatiable libido to tame the savages.

When a chance encounter on a dating app reveals his father’s double life, a troubled young man must face the parallels between his own destructive patterns and his alcoholic father’s infidelity.

In three reenactments of a controversial 1983 television interview, actors Manal Issa, Aïssa Maïga, and Isabel Sandoval play late French actress Maria Schneider. “The Listening Takes” is a prescient confrontation with the patriarchal structure of the film industry. [Overview Courtesy of Participant Inc.]