Synopsis

“Baby” is 18-year-old Wellington’s new persona since he began an exhilarating new life in sex work. After being released from a juvenile detention center to learn that his family has left him behind, he drifts through the streets of São Paulo until catching the eye of Ronaldo. The older man takes Baby under his wing and into his home, teaching him how to be an escort and welcoming him into his queer found family.

The relationship that emerges between Baby and Ronaldo is malleable and complex. Part lovers, part father/son, part boss/employee, it oscillates between caring and volatile. Baby, intoxicated by the freedom and empowerment he finds in sex work, forges out on his own, only to discover the true value of his newfound community. Tender and honest, Baby explores the complexities of queer joy with openness and hope.

Synopsis

Day after day, 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) projects on her bedroom walls the moments of easy-to-miss beauty she’s forever filming on her phone. Bailey is a born artist, but to find that path, she’ll need to scale some obstacles: a young, unsteady father (Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan), marrying yet again and full of get-rich-quick schemes. A peer group flirting with petty crime. A housing project designed to curb imagination. Life is hardening Bailey by the hour, so it’s a surprise when a soft-spoken, gender-bending stranger named Bird (Franz Rogowski, Passages) alights in her ‘hood, offering friendship while investigating his own painful past. Could this childlike free spirit be Bailey’s guide into a happier life? Or is Bird more complicated than that?

Director Andrea Arnold, a past award winner at the Chicago International Film Festival and at Cannes, returns to the world of hardscrabble adolescence she so vividly explored in Fish Tank and American Honey, both modern classics. But Bird also sees Arnold fly in new directions, blending fiery first-timers with famous faces in her cast, probing further into fluid identities, and scouring the dead ends and concrete jungles of Bailey’s world for new possibilities of grace and redemption.

Synopsis

Sibyl (Virginie Eifira) is struggling. Unsatisfied with her work as a therapist, she decides to curb her caseload and attempt to write a novel. Suffering from writer’s block, she reluctantly agrees to counsel Margot, a mercurial young film actress embroiled in a messy affair with her co-star. Taking a page straight out of Margot’s tumultuous life, the novel practically starts to write itself.

Synopsis

Youri, 16, has lived all his life in Cité Gagarine, a public housing complex on the outskirts of Paris. Gazing out his highrise window, he dreams of becoming an astronaut. When demolition plans for the complex are announced, Youri rallies friends and neighbors in hopes of saving the only home he’s known. Shot on location and in collaboration with neighborhood residents, Gagarine is a moving meditation on the meaning of home.