The story of 16-year-old Kayla Adams, whose mother, Karen is advised by the school’s counselor to send Kayla to get treatment at a youth residential treatment center after she gets expelled from school. Kayla arrives at the Utah facility on the same day as her roommate Amanda, a treatment program veteran who knows exactly what the girls were in for. Led by headmistress Miss Connie, the staff uses draconian methods including force-feeding medications, arbitrary punishments, solitary confinement, verbal and physical abuse to keep the students in line. After being pushed to their limits and stripped of their lifelines, including any ability to freely communicate with the outside world, the two young women must band together to survive and fight to expose the abuse before it’s too late.
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Bookstore owner Emma believes in fairy tales. Although she has yet to be swept away by prince charming, she sees real knight in shining armor potential with a new suitor, Landon. As Emma balances time with Landon and saving her bookstore with once irritating business consultant, Eric, however, she weighs storybook romance against genuine commitment. While she sorts out her feelings toward Landon and Eric, as well as toward love and romance, Emma begins to realize that fairytale endings aren’t always by the book.
The film is a lyrical exploration of a particular family situation and the human relationships within it. Devoid of any moral judgment, the eye of the director studies the boundaries of human behaviour and explores how far an individual can go, driven by love and the spirit of survival. Andrea Pallaoro was born in Trento but at the age of 17 moved to California to study filmmaking. His short film Wunderkammer was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. This year he brings his first feature-length film to the Orizzonti section.
Dreaming of the West, Boryana is determined not to have a child in communist Bulgaria. Nonetheless, her daughter Viktoria enters the world in 1979, curiously missing a belly button, and is declared the country’s Baby of the Decade. Pampered by her mother state until the age of nine, Viktoria’s decade of notoriety comes crashing down with the rest of European communism. But can political collapse and the hardship of new times finally bring Viktoria and her reluctant mother closer together
After colliding with a pedestrian on her bicycle who loses his memory following the accident, Darcy Archer becomes determined to help the handsome guy figure out who he is. In the process, she finds out a lot more about who she is, what she wants from life, and how this too-good-to-be-true guy might just be the man she’s been waiting to bump into all her life.
Veras Mantle is about a successful author who suffers from agoraphobia and can’t leave her house. When she is threatened by a sinister fan, Vera comes gradually behind the secret of her illness.
Circus owner Matt Masters is beset by disasters as he attempts a European tour of his circus. At the same time, he is caught in an emotional bind between his adopted daughter and her mother.
Frederick Schopner, a young management consultant, has been invited to participate in a special kind of team-building event. He and his colleagues will be chased across an outdoor obstacle course while being assessed on leadership qualities and their capacity for teamwork via video surveillance. Special highlight: the company has hired two over-the-hill actors to kidnap the consultants with unloaded weapons, keep them hostage, and to demand a high ransom from the company. A realistic role play with fun factor! But things don’t go according to plan: the actors find the make-believe scenario so convincing that they decide to put the plan into action for real, using real weapons. Meanwhile, Human Resources manager Vanessa is observing what’s happening via video surveillance and has to find a way to keep the hostage situation from escalating…
Husband Yang Baiwan and his wife run a restaurant in the countryside. Yang misunderstands that his wife is cheating on him and he then devises a plan of revenge. On the night he carries out his plan, two unfortunate robbers and a random couple get involved by accident. The six originally unrelated people now have something to do with each other, which triggers a series of absurd and ridiculous accidents. And their fate is also changed …
In an effort to reconnect and mend their relationship, a troubled couple and their preteen daughter seek an idyllic getaway to a remote mansion in rural Louisiana. But when unexpected visitors arrive, their facade of family unity starts to unravel, as terrifying secrets come to light.
Lorna is a strong-willed Texas woman who’s had enough of her untrustworthy husband, Dale’s, criminal acts and lack of husbandry. Fed up, she enlists the help of her old friend, Tiny, to help her figure out what to do with Dale after his latest double-cross involving the theft of $100,000 from a bank.
An awkward young teen working at a spa becomes overly attached to her fellow worker, a lonely outcast. They hang out at a bar owned by a strange pregnant artist and her has-been cowboy husband. Amid emotional crises, the three woman steal and trade one another’s personalities.
When Grady, an assassin with a genetic disorder that renders him unable to feel pain, is sent on a high-stakes assignment, his world is turned upside-down after an attack when he awakens to discover that he can feel pain for the first time in his life. With the clock ticking and his greatest asset gone, Grady will go head-to-head with his greatest fears and unspeakable enemies, while experiencing a tactile world he never could have imagined.
