The Sleeping Beast

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

July 1968 •English

Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.

Whip It

April 2009 •English

In Bodeen, Texas, Land Of The Dragon, an indie-rock loving misfit finds a way of dealing with her small-town misery after she discovers a roller derby league in nearby Austin.

Youth in Revolt

September 2009 •English

As a fan of Albert Camus and Jean-Luc Godard, teenage Nick Twisp is definitely out of his element when his mother and her boyfriend move the family to a trailer park. When a pretty neighbor named Sheeni plays records by French crooners, it's love at first sight for frustrated and inexperienced Nick. Learning that she is dating someone, Nick launches a hilarious quest to find his way into Sheeni's heart -- and bed.

I Killed My Mother

June 2009 •French

Hubert, a brash 17-year-old, is confused and torn by a love-hate relationship with his mother that consumes him more and more each day. After distressing ordeals and tragic episodes, Hubert will find his mother on the banks of Saint Lawrence river, where he grew up, and where a murder will be committed: the murder of childhood.

Me Without You

November 2001 •English

During a long, hot summer in seventies London, young neighbors Holly and Marina make a childhood pact to be friends forever. For Marina, troubled, fiercely independent, determined to try everything, Holly stays the only constant in a life of divorcing parents, experimental drugs and fashionable self-destruction. But for Holly, a friendship that has never been equal gradually starts to feel like a trap.

35 Shots of Rum

February 2009 •French

A widower and his daughter witness the retirement of a colleague of his and the closing of her department at her university.

Maurice

September 1987 •English

After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.

The Map Reader

October 2008 •English

Small-town New Zealand comedy-drama about Michael (Jordan Selwyn) - a 16-year-old whose passion for maps helps him escape his ordinary life and enjoy a state of isolation from those around him. But there are three women he can’t shut out – his single mother Amelia, a blind 20-year-old called Mary and Alison , a friend whose ‘grace betrays darker secrets’ apparently.

Word of God

September 2017 •Danish

It is the 1980s. Jens and his brothers live in a single-family house in Risskov, a suburb of Aarhus, Denmark. Here, the family's patriarch psychologist and self-appointed God, Uffe, rules the roost in his dressing gown and underwear. Changes threaten the peace when Uffe decides to write his memoirs.

The Devils

September 2002 •French

The story of the struggle of an autistic girl and her brother trying to survive without their parents.

Desire Street

May 2011 •English

A family (mother, daughter and son) tries to survive their loneliness and obsessions by going through different sexual experiences and relationships with a new neighbour, a prostitute.

Little Lips

February 1978 •Italian

A writer returns home to his estate after service in World War I. He has developed a very bad case of depression due to a war wound concerning his genitalia. He contemplates suicide, but recovers after becoming interested in his caretaker's 12 year-old war orphan niece, who now lives in the manor.

Dense on the Sea

March 2000 •Dutch

Constant Wegman (Benja Bruijning), a 14 year old boy, raised by his grandmother (Carry Tefsen) in Zeedijk, Amsterdam. She is the owner of a cafe-hotel “De Rode Laars” (“The Red Boots”). The dreaming Constant runs away from this world of drunkards, gamblers, fighters by writing poems. His grandmother wants him to take control of the cafe. Then Constant secretly subscribes to a national poem writing competition: a new Vondel is born!

Off the Road

February 2013 •French

Paul, fourteen, neglects his studies to spend all his time on his moped, to the consternation of his parents.

Shellfish

September 2022 •English

A stop motion animator has a week to make a film with his dumbstruck brother and the girl of his dreams without his parents finding out. As their shoot unravels, he must decide which is more important, his filmmaking or close relationships, in this coming-of-age comedy with a twist of stop motion animation.

Are You Scared

September 2006 •English

After waking up in an abandoned factory, six kidnapped terns realize they are contestants on a reality show called "Are You Scared?"

Travolta and Me

August 1993 •French

In the late 1970s, a French teenage girl is obsessed with the then popular American movie heartthrob John Travolta.

A Taste of Honey

October 1961 •English

While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.

Cascata

October 2019 •Portuguese

A Far Off Place

March 1993 •English

Thrown together under incredible circumstances, two strangers must discover courage and strength when they begin a journey across the treacherous African desert! Equipped only with their wits and the expertise of a native bushman who befriends them, they are determined to triumph over impossible odds and reach their destination. But along the way, the trio face a primitive desert wilderness.