The Paradise of Thorns

Just as the young members of the swimming team spend another day training in the pool, the cusp of early puberty threatens to turn innocent friendship and camaraderie into something much more. Sixth-grader Yu-Hsuan has a closely guarded secret, but this tide of feelings inside is brewing into a storm…

To cure their insomnia, a social outcast befriends an ASMR streamer where the lines between friendship and obsession become blurred.

Diego is a gay but closeted Hispanic chef living in East Los Angeles who works in the restaurant operated by his grandmother. Frustrated by the secretive lifestyle he shares with his similarly closeted lover, Pablo, Diego finds himself attracted to Wesley, one of the openly gay Caucasian men he feels are gentrifying his neighborhood. Their relationship pushes Diego to consider the possibility of a life he had never imagined.

Elías is just beginning his career as a high school teacher and just beginning his relationship with Pedro when he finds out that he's HIV positive. How will he tell his new lover?

Raised in a single parent family by his mother Nate Merritt, develops a friendship with a gay man whilst on leave from the US marines.

A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.

Ah Zhe falls deep into drugs, losing himself in the chaos—until he meets Xiao Fei. In a world of addiction, some return. Others vanish for good.

At a hilltop cottage, Giorgio and Matteo are hosting a dinner party for Giorgio's artistic friends from the city. As the group discuss art, cinema and gossip, Matteo becomes withdrawn. He goes inside and turns on his video camera, and through its lens he sees for the first time what his and Giorgio's relationship really is.

Two gifted music students navigate the complexities of youth, friendship and fame while fighting to win a career-defining music contest.

A married woman falls in love with a 19-year-old girl, and she has to make a choice between her family and the one who might be the love of her life.

Henry II and his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, battle over the choice of an heir.

Boris and Jonathan have been a couple for many years. But their relationship has reached a point where they might as well spend their evenings together separately: One lies in bed reading, the other works at a desk in the next room. While actor Boris digs deeper into rehearsals for a new film with an ambitious director and begins to mix real and fictional characters, Jonathan tries to redefine his voice as a writer. Ghosting through these days of wrestling with distance, closeness, trust, desire and fear of loss is Jonathans' young niece Josie, who is trying to deal with the approaching end of her childhood in her own idiosyncratic way. BONES AND NAMES, the feature debut of Fabian Stumm, portrays people searching for their place in life in different ways. A sensitive and humorous reflection on the dissonances in relationships that both connect and distance us from each other.