Unexpected Gift

In LA's Fairfax district, where ethnic groups abound, four households celebrate Thanksgiving amidst family tensions. In the Nguyen family, the children's acculturation and immigrant parents' fears collide. In the Avila family, Isabel's son has invited her estranged husband to their family dinner. Audrey and Ron Williams want to keep their own family's ruptures secret from Ron's visiting mother. In the Seelig household, Herb and Ruth are unwilling to discuss openly their grown daughter's living with her lover, Carla. Around each table, things come to a head. A gun, an affair, a boyfriend, and a pregnancy precipitate crises forcing each family to find its center.

I'm British but... uncovers a defiant popular culture, part Asian, part British, against a backdrop of fading English nationalism. The rhythms of Bhangra and Bangla music set the pace for this lively collage of interviews with British Asian youth. Mixing archival footage with present day street scenes of Asians in England, this film chronicles the role of race and cultural identity in the formation of modern day British society. I'm British but... is an engaging critique of nationalisms of any sort and a celebration of cultural diversity and hybridity.

Georgia Nicolson is fourteen, lives with nosey parents who don't understand her, an annoying three year old sister and has to wear a beret to school. She would, however, rather be blonde, have a smaller nose and a boyfriend. Revolving around her hilarious journal entries, prepare to be engulfed in the world of the soaring joys and bottomless angst of being a teenager.

Ellie and Malc Freeman are a working-class couple in their forties who live in a terrace house in a poor district of Liverpool. Ellie has a part-time job as a shop assistant; Malc is a warehouseman in a dead-end job. Ellie is convinced that Malc can do better. One day Ellie wins £1.5 million on the football pools. Resisting the temptation to spend all the money on herself, she invests it in a local security firm - on condition that they give Malc a job as a salesman... and that they don't reveal how he got his big break. But does Ellie like the man that her husband has turned into?

Indian mother Mrs Sethi's obsession with marrying off her daughter turns murderous. With jokes that routinely miss the mark and cringeworthy slapstick, this black comedy farce shouldn't work. Somehow, though, it does.

A group of women of Indian descent take a trip together from their home in Birmingham, England to the beach resort of Blackpool.

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family, and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.