Burning Bodhi (2016)

Christine Collins is overjoyed when her kidnapped son is brought back home. But when Christine suspects that the boy returned to her isn't her child, the police captain has her committed to an asylum.

Years after his father disowns his adopted brother for marrying a woman of lower social standing, a young man goes on a mission to reunite his family.

The daughter of a thief, young Moll is placed in the care of a nunnery after the execution of her mother. However, the actions of an abusive priest lead Moll to rebel as a teenager, escaping to the dangerous streets of London. Further misfortunes drive her to accept a job as a prostitute from the conniving Mrs. Allworthy. It is there that Moll first meets Hibble, who is working as Allworthy's servant but takes a special interest in the young woman's well-being. With his help, she retains hope for the future, ultimately falling in love with an unconventional artist who promises the possibility of romantic happiness.

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to a working class white woman, Cynthia.

A group of lifelong friends reunite to celebrate a special birthday, with Sydney's iconic Palm Beach providing a stunning backdrop for the unfolding drama. The good times roll, with loads of laughter, lavish meals, flowing wine and fantastic music, but slowly tensions mount and deep secrets arise.

A documentary about the history and reformation of Toronto punk band Death from Above 1979.

A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.

Movie star Roxy Carmichael is abandoning the bright lights of Hollywood, Calif. and returning to her small Ohio hometown -- at least long enough to dedicate a city building. And now the whole town of Clyde is bracing for Carmichael's return, most of all her now-married old flame Denton Webb and troubled teen Dinky Bossetti. An orphan with few friends, Dinky is convinced that Carmichael is her birth mother, and that the actress will reclaim her when she returns.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

Seven old college friends gather for a weekend reunion after the funeral of one of their own.

Estranged twins Maggie and Milo coincidentally cheat death on the same day, prompting them to reunite and confront the reasons their lives went so wrong. As the twins' reunion reinvigorates them, they realize the key to fixing their lives may just lie in repairing their relationship.

Almost 20 years after the start of the original "Brady Bunch" the kids are grown up and have kids of their own. Everyone is having a wonderful time back at the family house for Christmas, until Mike learns of a structural problem in one of the buildings he designed. As he is inspecting the problem, the building collapses, trapping him inside. As the whole family waits by the pile of rubble, they fear the worst. Will Dad be all right?

A group of friends reunite ten years after their high-school graduation.

Lucy has always used food to escape life's problems, but when this self-titled "fat friend" lures her group of old college buddies to the Montana wilderness, she reveals a new self - skinny, beautiful and still flawed.

In the spring of 1999, a group of old friends gather to celebrate their 20 year reunion. Among the group is Yeong-ho, a cold, unhappy man, whose demeanor puts a damper on the festivities. The seriousness of Yeong-ho's depression becomes apparent when he climbs a railroad bridge and looks like he might jump. At this crucial moment, memories of seven crucial episodes from Yeong-ho's past flood his mind.

Several alumni reminisce about their final year at St. Theresa's College and the events that shaped their lives.

Charley Pearl, wealthy heir and gadabout, is slated to marry Adele, the daughter of a Hollywood tycoon. But, during a wild bachelor party in Las Vegas, Charley strikes up a flirtation with nightclub crooner Vicki Anderson that soon leads to her bedroom. When the couple are discovered by Vicki's beau, infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel, he makes a surprising pronouncement -- they'd better marry, or Charley is a dead man.

When a drifter befriends a quirky mortician, an unlikely business partnership is formed. Paranoia soon develops, however, and both men are forced to come to terms with the fragility of friendship and loyalty.

The fan-demanded sequel to the 2005 short film Dare. Ben and Johnny, now in their early 30s, fortuitously run into each other at a party in Los Angeles after not seeing each other since high school, where they shared one slightly dangerous, very sexy, boundary-pushing night in a swimming pool. Is their connection still alive, and what do they do about it?

Patton Oswalt delivers a fresh hour plus of stand-up, covering everything from misery to defeat to hopelessness. It's his most upbeat special to date.

Set in the present times against two backdrops, New Delhi with its shining buildings and apparent cosmopolitan veneer thinly veils an underbelly of crimes against women and corruption at all levels. And a small village just 80 kilometers from New Delhi that is stuck in a time warp. Kajarya a woman in her early thirties has a strange but important place in the village social structure; she murders unwanted girl infants in the garb of religion. Meera is a rookie reporter.

Songbirds are disappearing at an alarming rate. The Messenger is a visually thrilling ode to the beauty and importance of the imperiled songbird, and what it means to all of us on both a global and human level if we lose them.

The film on the life of guru Osho Rajneesh and his spiritual journey to enlightenment.

Víctor Tellez is an intellectual, world-weary film critic who prefers to think in French and eschew the clichés of romantic movies...until he finds himself living a sappy, feel-good love story of his own.

The grim woes that surrounded famed director Peter Bogdanovich and his film, "They All Laughed."

Sam Klemke has filmed and narrated 50 years of his life, creating a strange and intimate portrait of what it means to be human.

Race. Class. Poverty. Faith. Hope. Soccer. Welcome to Alex––the largest and most notorious township in South Africa where soccer is lived, not played. With the first ever FIFA World Cup in Africa as a backdrop, witness the cultural importance of soccer in township South Africa through the lives of five individuals born and raised in the oldest and toughest of South Africa’s townships, Alexandra, locally known as ‘Alex.’ Seventeen-year-old dribbling sensation Nancy ‘Maradona’ Majola, former national team player Isaac ‘Shakes’ Kungwane, current professional Patrick ‘Raiden’ Phungwayo, 69-year-old Jacob ‘Babes’ Bopape one of the first professional soccer players in South Africa, and scholarship-winner Ricardo ‘Rico’ Kutumela will all take you into a culture dominated by soccer and into a storied township still largely unknown and misunderstood even among South Africans.

A group of lifelong mob movie extras mount a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in their local Staten Island theater in order to finally get some speaking roles. But the theater is the secret hideout of a real-life gangster who fancies himself an actor, and whom the FBI are hunting for the recent murder of a Broadway producer. The Feds insert their own undercover agent to audition for the role of Cassius, seeking to determine who is the real gangster among a cast of make-believe criminals. All the while, the oblivious cast seek only to prove to themselves, their families, and friends that they are more than just extras.

After his mother is injured in a car crash, baby koala Yindi is raised by humans. Yindi later reunites with his mother, and the two of them are released into the wild, where they adapt to their new surroundings and try to survive a brutal bushfire. Filmed on location in Eastern Australia, this entertaining documentary highlights the many difficulties koalas face and the special ways humans can work to help them.

In order to check the German offensive, Partizans send an elite team of explosive experts to blow up a strategically important bridge. Besides being heavily guarded, that bridge is almost indestructible and the only man who knows weak spots in the construction is the architect who built it. He is, however, reluctant to cooperate because he doesn't want to see his masterpiece destroyed.

With World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Russian Civil War as backdrop, it's an old-fashioned, blood-and-guts narrative, filled with earthly humor and a wealth of colorful characters. The story concerns the fluctuating fortunes of Grigory Melekhov, a young Cossack who is both a hero and a victim of the uprising.

Jim Traficant was a legendary quarterback turned mob busting Walking Tall Sheriff who rose to power on a platform of “honesty in politics”. He quickly ascended to the hallowed halls of Congress, becoming its most outspoken member. "Jimbo" as his die-hard supporters called him, was known for his polyester thrift store suits, shock top wigs, vulgar humor and profanity laced rhetoric against the FBI, IRS, and every president since Reagan. His one minute speeches made C-SPAN must see programming, as he signed off with his patented “Beam Me Up!” In his post-industrial hometown of Youngstown, Ohio -- dubbed Crimetown, USA for being the most mobbed up city in America -- "Jimbo" was a living legend, once garnering more than 90% of the vote. However, the eccentric maverick also had a dark side, becoming only the second Member of Congress expelled since the Civil War, eventually spending over seven years in federal prison on bribery and tax evasion charges.

Jasper has arrived in Delhi to begin a tour of India, where the newness of his surroundings quickly prove overwhelming. As he is drawn into the dynamics of his host family, the Bhatias, he finds that his mere presence has upset the natural order of things. Jasper finds that the first day of his journey is possibly more than he bargained for.

When a poker player hits rock bottom he enlists his best friend to pull off a high-stakes heist.

A sheltered, intelligent college student Doug changes his life forever when he hires an underachieving driver Scott. In order to escape his oppressively loving mother, Doug agrees to go on a spontaneous road trip with Scott and his college crush Stephanie. At the height of the journey, a tragic series of events tests their bond and opens the road to self-discovery. Drugs, gambling, and romance await the three friends in this coming-of-age drama.

When troubled teen Ray Klonsky began writing letters to prison inmate David McCallum, both of their lives changed forever. Hundreds of letters later, Ray graduated from university determined to set his wrongly convicted friend free.

Two young women are raped on their way home. The story follows the lives of both women and the different ways they deal with the crime.

After running away and finally finding her dream forever home, 13 year old foster kid Zoey Manning suddenly finds herself in a fight to protect her new family and their beloved dog Max.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a volatile but highly advantageous environment for young Russian businessmen eager to build the fledgling market economy by any means necessary. The most successful of these oligarchs was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who quickly became the wealthiest man in Russia. But Khodorkovsky was invested not only in business, but also in true social reform and a new ideal of an open society, an attitude that ran afoul of the absolute rule of Vladimir Putin. Tracing Khodorkovsky's dramatic, ambiguous rise to power and subsequent fall at the hands of Putin's KGB-infested government, this probing, deeply troubling documentary reveals a nation still unsure of its commitment to economic and social liberties. - Written by Los Angeles Film Festival