The Imperfect Cradle

Two couples and a surrogate lay bare the complications, contradictions, heartbreak, and absurdities implicit in how we think about motherhood.

The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

A university professor and his wife have two sons with infantile paralysis. Through trial and error, they struggle to open a school for disabled children at their own expense. Based on a true story, it features natural child performances under Hiroshi Shimizu’s skillful direction.

Over the course of one night, the trivial squabbles of five couples from the same apartment building escalate into potentially relationship-ending rows.

William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.

Lisa is a young, Christian woman. Bobby, her boyfriend, however, is a street hoodlum. Lisa prays constantly that Bobby will accept God in his life. She soon gets what she wants, but discovers that Bobby's conversion means that she has to get her life in order as well. As a result, she is forced to resolve not only her relationship with Bobby, but with everyone in her life.

Carolyn's sorority sisters set their sights on the Sorority of the Year award and coaching challenged athletes is their ticket to the trophy. But when the queen of formals finds herself mentoring Pumpkin, a disabled athlete, their two worlds collide.

After getting laid off from work, Bagas turns to squash sport to manage his emotions, invited by his friend who is also a former employee that had been laid off months ago. Bagas feels it's best to not tell the news to his girlfriend, Devi, while she is still in recovery from depression. Later that day, Devi accidentally finds out.

When a gifted chef loses his sharp sense of taste, he turns to an old friend who helps him rediscover traditional flavors through an old recipe book.

The film follows Manuel Maria du Bocage, 18th-century poet, as he travels through the world from orgy to orgy and from excess to excess.

Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.

A story of two people who fell in love and couldn't find their way in the big city: a man who came from the countryside to work in a steel factory and a woman who works in the factory restaurant.

Long-term couple Owen and Hallie are breaking up—or maybe not?—and just as their relationship reaches a turning point, Matt and Willa embark on a romance of their own.

A spoken word piece about an autistic person experiencing sensory overload in a world that rejects their existence.

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

A young couple grieving the recent death of their daughter move to the countryside where they are haunted by their tragedy and a sinister darkness.

After narrowly escaping death and a life sentence in prison, Becky becomes obsessed with a young couple-determined to claim a life with them, whether they want it or not.

Zooni Ali Beg is a blind Kashmiri girl who travels without her parents for the first time with a dance troupe to Delhi to perform in a ceremony for independence day. On her journey, she meets Rehan Khan, a casanova and tour guide who flirts with her. Although her friends warn Zooni about him, she cannot resist falling in love with him and he takes her on a private tour of New Delhi. But there is more to Rehan than meets the eye and Zooni will have to make a heartbreaking decision.

A solitary Frenchman seeks inspiration in a ruined duchy, meeting eccentric figures with their visions of art, madness, and myth. During 15 minutes he wanders across the broken edges of reality and sanity, he questions what form inspiration can still take among fragments of ruins and environment, as the viewer steps into his eyes and ears, discovering beauty within decay.