Adult Life Skills

In the anarchic town of Seaside, nowhere near the sea, puppeteers Judy and Punch are trying to resurrect their marionette show. The show is a hit due to Judy's superior puppeteering but Punch's driving ambition and penchant for whisky lead to an inevitable tragedy that Judy must avenge.

Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.

Nina Geld's passion and talent have made her a rising star in the comedy scene, but she's an emotional mess offstage. When a new professional opportunity coincides with a romantic one, she is forced to confront her own deeply troubled past.

A 16-year-old girl takes her parents hostage after they miss her big jump-roping competition.

Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.

Agnes feels stuck. Unlike her best friend, Lydie, who’s moved to New York and is now expecting a baby, Agnes still lives in the New England house they once shared as graduate students, now working as a professor at her alma mater. A ‘bad thing’ happened to Agnes a few years ago and, since then, despite her best efforts, life hasn’t gotten back on track.

Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a 17-year-old firecracker living with her single mom, Laurie, and her mom's new boyfriend, Bob, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. When Bob's mentally unbalanced son, Luke, arrives from rehab to live with the family, Erica finds her domestic and personal life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks Kala and Claudine in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a high school teacher's dark secret.

A seemingly perfect family moves into a suburban neighborhood, but when it comes to the truth as to why they're living there, they don't exactly come clean with their neighbors.

In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.

A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.

In a rowdy stand-up set, Shane Gillis riffs on his girlfriend's Navy SEAL ex, touring George Washington's house and being bullied by an Australian Goth.

An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.

When her idolized twin sister Audrey dies in a car accident, Laurel decides to take her place. But, as she eases into the life she has always wanted, she must decide between continuing the lie or revealing herself.

In East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her domineering mother for her to get married, have children, and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory.

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.

A year in the life of Alice Klieg, a woman with Borderline personality disorder who wins the Mega Millions lottery, quits her meds and buys her own talk show.

Bettie Page grew up in a conservative religious family in Tennessee and became a photo model sensation in 1950s New York. Bettie's legendary pin-up photos made her the target of a Senate investigation into pornography, and transformed her into an erotic icon who continues to enthrall fans to this day.

After inheriting a remote Montana house, Jackson moves there from New York with his partner Grace, and the couple soon welcome a child. As Jackson becomes increasingly absent and rural isolation sets in, Grace struggles with loneliness, creative frustration, and unresolved emotional wounds. What begins as an attempt at renewal gradually turns into an intense psychological descent, placing strain on their relationship and exposing the fragile balance between love, identity, and motherhood.

In trouble with the local authorities, Mabel Simmons, notoriously known as Madea, is on the run from the law. With no place to turn, she moves in with her friend Bam who is recovering from surgery. Unbeknownst to Bam however, Madea is only using the "concerned friend" gag as a way to hide out from the police.

During the ill-fated Hungarian revolution of 1956, Karcsi Szabo, star player on the water polo team, is torn between his love for a revolutionary student and his training for the Melbourne Olympics.

In this short fiction film, Marie has been living in the midst of a nightmare since the accident of Bernard, her brother. Clinging excessively to this handicapped being, she wants to take charge of it. Étienne, her fiancé, has no taste for sacrifice. He reproaches Marie for languishing in her adolescence. Love will prevail. In a definitive gesture, Marie will free herself from the bonds that still held her back to her childhood.

A man travels across New York City to get a Nathan's Famous hot dog.

A newspaper photographer researches an 1873 double homicide and finds her own life paralleling that of a witness who survived the tragic ordeal.

The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated women begin to intersect.

Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones.

For a grieving fiancée, learning to love again requires the help of her late love's three best friends.

Anne-Marie lives an easy life with Gilbert, a rich plastic surgeon: a beautiful house, a doggy, a cleaning lady, expensive furniture, the lot. Not so easy in fact when she thinks twice. She does not get on with her husband any longer. She gets on his nerves and he does not attract her any longer. She feels good only when she jogs on the beach and ... when she is the arms of her lover, Leo. One day, Gilbert gets killed in a car accident. Good news, since she will be able to live with Leo. The trouble is her well-meaning family settle at her villa with a view to supporting the "poor widow" morally. Anne-Marie just cannot admit she is not distressed at all, especially to her son Christophe. She is now even more of a prisoner than when Gilbert was alive...

Gabriel and Iris head back to their family holiday home in Portugal with their daughters Emma and Zoé, a couple of adorable six-year-old twins, for a vacation. In the heart of the sun-drenched countryside, as the little ones swim and laugh, the couple’s past begins to rear its head. Emma is overwhelmed by a secret that is simply too big for her to keep, and which she has no right to share with her twin sister.

A mild-mannered bank executive mentors a teenage con artist and tries to make a career change as a doughnut merchant.

Lord Donald and Lady Nancy reside in the magnificent but run-down Longleigh House with James, their mentally disabled adult son. Nancy has fallen seriously ill and Donald is preparing to sell the house to raise enough money to pay for an operation. He arranges for the family nurse, Mary, to take care of Nancy while he leaves to tend to the sale. However, James wants to prove to his father that he can look after his mother on his own and decides to lock Mary out of the house. It isn't long before James starts mixing his mother's pills and forgetting to take his own medication, and as the stress of looking after his mother increases, so too does the severity of his own condition.

Sunday. Classic game on the brazilian championship. Rossi’s family organize themselves in front of TV. Eunice, his mother, looks trough the window while Borges, his dad, and Cauã, his older brother, watch the football match. Rossi tries to find his place in the house.

The one joy in the lives of a mother and daughter comes from the regular letters sent to them from Paris from the family's adored son, Otar. When the daughter finds out that Otar has died suddenly, she tries to conceal the truth from her mother, changing the course of their lives forever.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

In the late 1970s, a French teenage girl is obsessed with the then popular American movie heartthrob John Travolta.

After returning from a year-long Moon mission, Cassie, a NASA botanist, finds herself in a remote cabin in the woods, where her estranged twin sister, Stella, a former NASA architect, has found a new life with climate activist Bryan. Old wounds resurface as the sisters attempt to pick up the pieces of the rivalry that broke them apart.

While on a journey of discovery in exotic India, beautiful young Ruth Barron falls under the influence of a charismatic religious guru. Her desperate parents then hire PJ Waters, a macho cult de-programmer who confronts Ruth in a remote desert hideaway. But PJ quickly learns that he's met his match in the sexy, intelligent and iron-willed Ruth.

Heavily pregnant Natalie 18 (bolshie and brash) still parties hard with best mate Mel. Homayra 60's (Middle eastern and proud) lives next door and cares for ailing husband Sully. She's sick of Natalie and her friends, their racist comments and loud music. However one night, events change the course of the two women's lives forever and bring forth an unlikely union.

Courtenay John Dayre is drugged by a jealous spy on the night before his loveless marriage to Anthea. His twin, John Courtenay Dayre, reluctantly agrees to impersonate his brother at the wedding, only to discover a genuine affection for his accidental wife. Meanwhile, Courtenay begins to understand the price of things when he realises that his affair has allowed a valuable military secret to be stolen.

There's this hot ice-hockey guy called Lauri Mäntyvaara. Satu promises she'll do her best, so that her best friend Heidi will get him. You'd think that the picturesque Finnish Archipelago would be the perfect place to discover your first love (and get rid of your virginity), but it will not be easy, if a cynical protein-shake-slurping ice hockey team thinks the target of your desire should focus only on the European Championship, and the only places you can escape to are the pretentious summer wedding parties - or bitter divorce parties.