Twice Upon a Time

Three stories. Three ages. Three men. Grandfather, father, son. One is an orderly, one is a leading sportsman, and one is a master taxidermist. One desires love, the other success, and the third immortality.

A Japanese man and a gay bar-owner in Hong Kong drink beer as they talk about their childhood and experiences.

An unemployed Latvian gets a job as an agent finding a house in France.

It Ain't Necessarily So captures a budding Japanese jazz singer and her biracial vocal instructor who struggle to agree on the proper way to sing Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy.” Humor is no stranger to jazz singers Eiko Katayama and Kazue Hiraoka who star alongside Masa Fox, their English teacher. "Master at capturing hyper-awkward moments... brilliantly explore how representations of culture and identity ain’t necessarily how they appear." --Wilda Wong, San Diego Asian Film Festival

Yu Ming is bored of his life in China and decides to go to Ireland. He studies the language, but is dismayed to find that no one understands him when he gets there.

A teacher attempts to teach his students to properly enunciate the letter 'R'.

Osman can understand his mother tongue, Kurdish, but cannot speak it, and he speaks Turkish, which happens to be his second language, but cannot understand it. As a result of this condition of his, Osman starts to fail at handling two concurrent tasks. Just like he cannot respond to his patrons while he is working, he cannot engage in a conversation with his friends whilst they are having coffee together. Even though he wants to get married, he fails at sustaining a long-term relationship with women whom he meets. Osman’s life starts to change after a customer tells him that she could help him with his obsession.

As their Debs application deadline approaches, a closeted couple must sort their domestic issues as Gaeilge to prevent their classmates from knowing they’re an item. However, translation issues leave their relationship in jeopardy.

A crazy referendum throws Switzerland into a state of emergency. By the acceptance of the initiative “No Bilangue” there should be from now on only one national language: French. Many German-speaking Swiss are therefore having a crisis.

With the 70s behind him, San Diego's top rated newsman, Ron Burgundy, returns to take New York's first 24-hour news channel by storm.

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Victor, a passionate birdwatcher, is convinced that all the pigeons have vanished. When he meets Abby, a photographer, there’s no doubt for him : she is the mastermind behind their disappearance. What follows is a duel between Abby's budding love and Arthur's growing paranoia, where everything is held together by a feather.

Always the last to know, filmmaker Jon Beaton learns of his autism late in life – a diagnosis that brings liberation and mourning in equal measure. Seeking company, he turns to four figures who may have missed the memo entirely: Charles Darwin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Émile Reynaud, and the Buddha. Beaton builds a praxinoscope – Reynaud's own invention – to bring them back to life.

Gunars Taurins has become a dad-sitter in Latvia. He wants to return to France as soon as possible once he has found a caregiver for his father. But it's not that easy and Gunars has to stay in Riga whether he likes it or not.

How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.

Despite an unrivaled talent for communicating, Jake has trouble talking to women. When an impossible situation presents itself, Jake ignores the signs and goes on a wild goose-chase to pursue his quest for love. When his plan is foiled, a new best friend helps him finally express himself successfully to a woman – without uttering a single word.

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Steven, a pupil in a special-needs class, learns that his school has won a trip to Alcabideche, Portugal. He is overjoyed to get the chance to finally see his homeland. Once there, he decides to conduct his own holidays...

A surreal trip into the world of an extremely long german word.

For his 45th birthday, wealthy Californian Adam receives a surprise gift from his choreographer partner: 100 weekly Spanish lessons with Cariño, a vivacious expat who teaches virtually from her home in Costa Rica. Adam's unconvinced at first; a self-described “creature-of-habit”, he’s unsure about where or how this new element will fit into his carefully-structured routine.