Puccini for Beginners

The Firefly

November 2013 •Spanish

After her estranged brother's sudden death, young wife Lucia bonds with his fiancée through their shared grief and finds herself falling in love.

Dry Cleaning

September 1997 •French

A bored couple takes in a young man who turns their lives inside out.

The Rainbowmaker

May 2008 •English

Datho (Merab Ninidze) has been innocent in prison for many years. When he comes home nobody wants him. His angelic wife Elene (Anna Antonowicz) has fun with a fire-eater. The two children imagined the father as a hero, not as a sorrowful knight. But everything changes when Datho can freeze his enemies in the bathtub or he calls for rain so that they remain stuck in the mud.

The Boss from the West

November 1988 •English

Rosenstrasse

September 2003 •German

When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?

Actresses

December 2007 •French

Marcelline is an actress. Forty, single and childless, she begins rehearsals for Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Denis, the director, admires her greatly and promises he’ll make her happy on stage — she will shine. But things don’t go to plan.

Afterparty

December 2013 •English

On the night of his brother's wedding, best man Charlie gets the old gang back together for a fun-filled, post reception after party, at the newlyweds' home, where he has been staying for several weeks. Unsure of how to proceed with his own troubled marriage, Charlie reunites "the fellas" fifteen years after high school, in hopes that revisiting the past will help him find clarity for the future. What he finds, however, is that while his friends have all taken different paths, they are all faced with similar conundrums that comes with being in one's thirties.

The Path of Happiness

January 1916 •English

Sick of life in the city after his fiancée deserts him, Merrill Day goes to the country for a rest with his sister and niece. There he meets Joan, who has lived in the hills for her whole life, and they quickly begin a romance. Grekko, however, a hunchback who has loved Joan for years, convinces her that Merrill's sister is really Merrill's wife.

My Days of Mercy

March 2018 •English

The daughter of a man on death row falls in love with a woman on the opposing side of her family's political cause.

Splendid Isolation

July 2022 •English

Little is known about the catastrophe Anna and Hannah have escaped. On a desolate island they find an abandoned house where Anna takes care of Hannah. Hannah’s fragile condition reminds the two lovers that their time together is coming to an end.

The Prince of Tides

December 1991 •English

A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

March 2017 •French

An attention-craving mother nearing 50, unemployed and living with her pregnant daughter and son-in-law, suddenly finds herself with child, too...

The Bride!

March 2026 •English

In the 1930s, a lonely Frankenstein travels to Chicago to seek the aid of a Dr. Euphronius in creating a companion for himself. The two reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police and a wild and radical social movement.

Modern Day Arranged Marriage

December 2005 •English

Rajesh and Suna agree to meet to discuss their marriage suitability. Is there marriage on the menu, or just coffee?

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely

February 2014 •English

The arrival of a handsome new farmhand threatens the balance between a farmer and his daughter.

Daughters

February 2014 •German

Agnes, a teacher from the Hessian provinces, has come to Berlin to identify a dead girl who might be Lydia, her runaway daughter. It turns out not to be Lydia, but Agnes stays in the city anyway. Still frantically looking, she comes a young stray called Ines who no longer leaves her side...

Drink

January 2014 •English

A Twilight Zone-inspired cautionary tale about a young mother forced to come face-to-face with her deepest desire.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 2

January 2014 •English

Step back into the imaginative and frankly terrifying world of Becky & Joe with Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. In this episode: Some things change over Time.

Kati: A Freestyle That Stays

July 2024 •German

Four years after the end of the German Democratic Republic, Katarina Witt, two-time Olympic champion, is planning her comeback to prove to herself and to a united Germany that she still has what it takes. To do this, she has to team up with her former coach Jutta Müller and complete the toughest training of her life.

Double Act

February 2002 •English

Ruby and Garnet are identical twins, ten years old and inseparable. Since mother's death they live with father and grandmother in the big city. When one day attractive Rose steps into father's life, Ruby and Garnet's whole life is turned upside down. They must leave their beloved granny and move to the countryside with father and that much hated "new one" because father wants to fulfill his most ardent dream to open a bookstore. The girls consider this to be quite terrible and try everything to be thrown out of the new school. But then everything goes quite different: Ruby discovers that identical twin girls are being looked for to star in a TV series. Suddenly, they notice that they are not as similar at all as they thought, and that each one must find her own way.