Historias Breves I: Downhill

A man searches for his father, Pedro Páramo, in a town doomed by violence and the fury of a frustrated love.

Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

A psychic's ominous reading sends a man into a tailspin.

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.

The year is 1955, and a great flood is coming to Northfork, Montana. A new hydroelectric dam is about to be installed in the mountains above the town, ready to submerge the valley in the name of progress. It is the responsibility of a six-man Evacuation Committee to relocate the townsfolk to higher ground. Most have duly departed, but a few stubborn stragglers remain – among them a priest caring for a sickly orphan, a boy whose fevered visions are leading him to believe he is a member of a roaming band of lost angels desperately searching for a way home.

A disturbed and institutionalized 16-year-old girl struggles between fantasy and reality.

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.

When immense pressure threatens a ballerina in a new lead role, she and another dancer escape into a friendship that isolates them from the real world.

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

An ex-felon returns home from prison and must confront the demons of his past.

A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.

A woman who works in a meat packing plant is continuously preyed upon by lecherous men.

Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complimentary or if they strive to eliminate one another.

Little Lide disappears in the forest while her family packs up their home. As a fire breaks out, her mother must race to reach her before the flames do.

Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.

Charlie Simms is a student at a private preparatory school who comes from a poor family. To earn the money for his flight home to Gresham, Oregon for Christmas, Charlie takes a job over Thanksgiving looking after retired U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, a cantankerous middle-aged man who lives with his niece and her family.

During a game of hide and seek, a new bride hides in a chest and remains undiscovered until a strange visitation thirty years later.

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Jack's lavish, fast-paced lifestyle changes one Christmas night when he stumbles into a grocery store holdup and disarms the gunman. The next morning he wakes up in bed lying next to Kate, his college sweetheart he left in order to pursue his career, and to the horrifying discovery that his former life no longer exists. As he stumbles through this alternate suburban universe, Jack finds himself at a crossroad where he must choose between his high-power career and the woman he loves.

The film tells the story of a man and woman who don't know each other. After being matched by a matchmaker, after going through a series of red tape, they were sent to the bridal chamber and began a difficult life as a couple. Despite the primitive shooting methods and lack of training of the actors, the film has a very important place in the history of Chinese film.

Hungry for sun, light and warmth, a group of teenagers embark on a dream trip to the Balearic Islands.

Overwhelmed by grief following the death of his wife, Donnelly shares a train carriage home with a troubled young man identified only as the 'Kid'. As the Kid becomes more agitated and foul-mouthed, the journey takes on a violent and dangerous hue – for the bereaved Donnelly and for other hapless passengers on the train. Academy Award Winner: Best Live Action Short Film – 2005

A mother who writes children’s storybooks, ironically, doesn’t have enough time to create stories for her own son. The restless child finds a chance to create his own stories when his grandfather, comes up with a game. They fill an old milk can with pieces of paper, each containing a word which will be a “story-starter”. Tales of heroes and villains, magic and places fill up the child’s imagination. But the child’s made-up story is in need of a happy ending. Now, it depends on the storyteller mother to create the greatest ending of them all.

Yeda, the green-faced woman, sells homemade bread to support the house where she lives with her sick husband. Through the context of green-faced people, we know the reality of those who live on the fringes of a purple-faced society.

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

Harraga is an illegal immigrant who do it by land, by air or by sea. With no visa, nor passport. Out of the law (...) Yes, that's the key, outlaw ... but what happens when those harraga are kids?

Alex is a passionate musician. He travels from one gig to the next with his tango band. He can't make a living from his music, but he doesn't really care. This changes when he and his bandmates steal a rocker band's tour bus and there is an accident. Alex's friend Tommy dies and the tango band is finished. Suddenly Alex finds himself without an apartment, a pile of debts and with the grim rockers breathing down his neck. There's only one thing to do: go into hiding.

After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.

Santa, an eight-year-old girl from the desolate Bolivian Altiplano, embarks on a rollercoaster journey to take her mother from a life of misery into paradise. The two of them made a pact: when her mother passes, the girl would follow the stars and carry her body across the desert toward heaven, a place they are certain is physically real. Crossing the wilderness, Santa encounters a group of female wrestlers that help her on her way. Also, a gruff policeman who arrests Santa but soon suspects she has magical powers. He decides that to achieve his own salvation he must join Santa on her quest beyond the horizon.

It's Christmas time, and a grandmother spends a quiet afternoon tending to the family chores. But the arrival of an unexpected visitor brings with her some deadly consequences.

Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.