SCHIZO

This beautiful and moving feature, set in modern-day Kazakhstan, depicts the hard choices a young man makes when he's caught between poverty, crime and love, guided only by his wits and his better nature.

KONTROL

The massive labyrinthine netherworld that is the Budapest subway system provides the stunning setting for "Kontroll," a high style, high speed romantic thriller in which the lives of assorted outcasts, lovers, and dreamers intersect and collide, and where one handsome young hero, one mysterious maiden, and one particularly nasty killer must conduct a race against time, trains, and destiny itself in their frantic pursuit of one another.

THE EDUKATORS

Jan, Peter and Jule are living out their rebellious youth. They are united by their passion to change the state of the world. Jan and Peter become "The Edukators," mysterious perpetrators who non-violently warn the local rich their "days of plenty are numbered." Complications follow when vulnerable Jule ends up falling for both young men. Reckless choices result in danger. An operation gone wrong and what was never intended to be a kidnapping brings the three young idealists face-to-face with the values of the generation in power.

MEAN CREEK

Mean Creek - Set in a small Oregon town where secrets are hard to keep and lays even harder, Mean Creek flows with a simple elegance of truth and consequences as it follows a crisis in the lives of its teen characters, keenly directed by first-timer Jacob Aaron Estes. The journey within begins as a plot for playful payback on a local troublemaker; the journey onscreen begins with a river, as a ragtag group of troubled-and-not teenagers set out on a boat trip to celebrate the birthday of their youngest member. As a sort of boyish Heart of Darkness trip develops, cracks in the crew form when some of the teens have second thoughts about what they are about to do. Photographed in mossy greens and bark-colored skies, Mean Creek exposes a strange natural growth that appears in the nuanced performances of a fantastic cast, almost as if audience and child are forced to grow up together. What is so fascinating is watching an instinct-driven morality play itself out, swirl in fits and starts, float along for a while, and then finally settle into decisions that will haunt the characters for the rest of their lives.

TARNATION

"Tarnation" is as fiercely personal a self-portrait as can be recalled. Having documented his life since the age of eleven, Jonathan Caouette weaves a psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 movies, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family torn apart by dysfunction and reunited through the power of love. The film begins with 31-year-old Caouette learning of his mother's lithium overdose and his trip home to aid in her recovery. Slipping back into the archives of his youth, we watch Caouette grow up on camera, seeking escape from family trauma through musical theater, grade-B horror flicks and the forging of his identity through popular culture.

animal

"love it, hate it, unscramble it."