Spark Features

In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.

In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.

Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.

Two unemployed friends have a fresh idea: they want to stage Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' in Grand Theft Auto. But even in a virtual world, reality intrudes in a wild and trippy film shot entirely inside the ultra-violent video game.

Over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from Feña's past are thrust back into his life: his foreign father, his straight ex-boyfriend, and his 13-year old half-sister. Having lost touch since transitioning from female to male, Feña must navigate the new dynamics of these old relationships while tackling the day-to-day challenges that come with living a life in-between.

When her boyfriend returns to Ukraine to care for his ailing father, 23-year-old Dakota must navigate the precarious anxiety of holding onto the past and forging her future in the midst of her South Brooklyn universe.

It’s “draw day” across Iraq, when schools select students for the honour of bringing items to their mandatory local celebrations of President Saddam Hussein’s birthday. Nine-year-old Lamia lives in the historic marshes with her spirited grandmother, Bibi. Before school, Bibi teaches Lamia clever tricks to avoid being chosen for the president’s cake. However, when Musa, the authoritative teacher, calls Lamia’s name for the most challenging task—the birthday cake—she has no choice but to accept. Refusing could mean imprisonment or even death.

Azra is worlds apart from her conservative Muslim mother. When her father suddenly dies on a trip home to Pakistan, Azra finds herself on a Bollywood-inspired journey through memories, both real and imagined; from her mother’s youth in Karachi to her own coming- of-age in rural Canada.

A filmmaker ventures into the archives of her photographer mother to construct a personal story of love, loss, and finding someone in the work they leave behind.

In West Hollywood’s Russian district, Margarita lives out the American Dream: competing on a reality show. Will she slay, serve, or survive?

Newly released after being locked up in his teens, 30-year-old Ricky navigates the challenging realities of life post-incarceration, and the complexity of gaining independence for the first time as an adult.

A long time ago Ed Saxberger wrote a book of poetry that no one ever cared about. When a group of young artists rediscover his work, he must reassess his genius. The wild card in the group is Gloria, a talented and mercurial theatre actress who toys with affections and who is all set to be admired by Saxberger.

After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.

Bird returns home to visit her mom in search of the perfect wedding venue after a surprise engagement to her longtime boyfriend, but much to everyone's surprise, she is actually on the hunt for something else.

Reeling from a failed marriage and in need of comfort and a new perspective, a middle aged man returns home to take care of his aging mother within the deceptively tranquil landscape of rural Montana.

For 11-year-old Vrej, life in his homeland Artsakh is like a paradise, but when war starts again, can he carry a nation’s hopes on his young shoulders?

Rico’s summer is a mix of chasing girls and hustling homemade cocktails out of a cooler on Orchard Beach, the Bronx. But when Destiny, his teenage girlfriend, crashes at his place with his family, it’s only a matter of time before his carefree days come spiraling down.

After an abrupt layoff, Z embarks on a trip across the Midwestern United States in search of a friend who has seemingly disappeared off the grid. Traveling with her two closest friends, these three queer black femmes find their priorities tested as shapeshifting threats in each city expose (inter)personal and ideological fractures.

An endearingly nostalgic exploration of the defiant Vietnamese new wave music scene, as well as a vulnerable and personal look at the filmmaker and her community’s revisiting of their unexamined past.

An aspiring hospital chaplain begins a yearlong residency in spiritual care, only to discover that to successfully tend to her patients, she must look deep within herself.