These tales are set in places ranging from a Tokyo porn palace to a Russian prison island.
Plumbing the depths of a scary cult in Cheyenne, Wyoming was required for German director Christian Bauer in "Missing Allen". It's a "Blair Witch Project"-like search for disappeared cameraman Allen Ross -only it's real. Japanese student Yoshiya Shigeno focuses on a friend too, in psychological "Fatherless". Masaya's "symptoms" are passive sex binges and self-mutilation. His "cure" may be a Freudian return home. Time rules some films. Valeri, Mihael and Andrei serve life terms in "Blatnoi Mir". "Samud" is the 13-year story of Palestinian children at a refugee camp near Bethlehem. Meanwhile Peter Torbiornsson's 20-year story, "The Lovers of San Fernando", is about a Nicaraguan couple. France's Benoit Dervaux asks "What is mental illness?" in her sensitive "La Deviniere", about 19 "incurable" mental hospital patients. Other stories tackle gay parenting ("Daddy and Papa") and an elderly Jewish lesbian couple ("Ruthie and Connie"). Also offered are Antonis Kioukas' "Kurdistan" and Heddy Honnigmann's "Goede Man, Llieve Soon".