Boy´s Games

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

Four single college mates try their luck in love by taking a stab at dating, leading them to humiliating, cringeworthy, and formative experiences.

The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.

After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, but they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.

Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.

Three adolescent boys become captivated by the queer nightlife over summer break, but a missing person pulls them back into the reality they tried to leave behind.

Manuela and her mother have different ways of perceiving the world they live in. They discuss masculinity, love, and, as if that were not enough, the importance of a sofa.

Men Only is a provocative two-part drama about the dark side of modern masculinity. What do men want, what do women want from them, and can the two ever be reconciled? Our men are a five-a-side football team from South London. Only they're too old, too slow, too under the thumb at home to waste their precious Tuesday nights kicking a ball around and losing every time. So the football stops and the excitement starts. They begin in lap-dancing bars, but soon they want more. Porn. Violence. Sex. Class A's. What happens on Tuesday nights should never go home. But one night they finally go too far, and the two worlds look set to collide

In a fading Louisiana town, Jerome dreams of Hollywood while Terry seeks escape from a troubled home. United by desperation, they train for a high-stakes bodybuilding competition that becomes their shot at something more. Filmed over 18 months, WEST OF GREATNESS blazes a bold new trail in cinematic storytelling, blending raw documentary with scripted drama. It's a haunting, human story of ambition, survival, and the quiet bond that forms when there's nothing left to lose.

For generations, two rival French villages, Longueverne and Velrans, have been at war. But this is no ordinary conflict, for the on-going hostilities are between two armies of young schoolboys. When he is beaten by his father for having lost his buttons, the leader of the Longueverne army, Lebrac, has an idea which will give his side the advantage: next time, he and his brave soldiers will go in battle without their clothes...

In a closed locker room, rugby players perform the last pre-match rituals. Warming up their souls and bodies, all tense in anticipation of the fight.

To save his failing business, an elderly tailor must confront his deep-seated prejudice when he accepts an unusual order: creating a female cosplay costume for a young man.

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.