She gets short of breath from incense cleansing rituals, dream diaries, wish lists that are supposed to be thrown into the fire bowl and other such esoteric hocus-pocus. At a winter solstice party thrown by her older sister Svea just before Christmas, the more rational climate researcher Liane encounters a world that is foreign to her. The scientist meets Mani, who is walking the spiritual path and who somehow fascinates her despite all the differences. Her relationship with her long-time boyfriend Philipp is less good. After an argument, he flies to Gomera alone. She stays behind, not only worrying about the weather being far too warm, but also has to put up with her Christmas-crazy neighbor and his family and receive her conspiracy-obsessed in-laws-to-be while Mani stays overnight with her. On Christmas Eve, fate and the weather really start to shake up Liane.
Dounia, a young woman who travels to Russia to bid a final farewell to her sick father, arrives to find her stepmother informing her that it's too late, yet she stays for the funeral and discovers she has a half-brother.
After serving his sentence for a sex crime, Nanne's son Arnout returns home to the farm in Friesland. Consumed by a poisonous cocktail of grief, hatred, biting self-reproach and against the backdrop of the coercive mores of a conservative Frisian rural community, Nanne tries to regain his compassion for Arnout.
"Nostalgia of Everything", the second short film test of the "Experimental Test" trilogy, is about the director creating a story by using random videos he shot in the past and adding some new extra scenes. As in the first film of the trilogy (Days, Months, Years and Nothing Else), the scenes in this film were shot in a short time with a phone camera, with natural lights, and the story (monologue) written later was adapted to the harmony of these visuals and non-original music "Terje Rypdal - Mystery Man".
In 2023 China, as the pandemic ends and societal pressures rise, a young piano teacher, suffering abuse from her dictatorial husband, transforms into a fox and begins to haunt the spaces of the living.
Mei, a daughter of immigrants living in Poland, dreams of becoming a pianist. Trying to combine the colliding cultures she lives in she takes a step that can’t be undone. Starting adolescence she must choose between her family and her own happiness.
“Taiwan is just an island across the sea,” Grandma says. Wei must stay in Fuzhou, China, and do everything he can to stop his cousin from going to Taiwan.
Indigenous young man Bali follows his father into the mountains to hunt. His father calls it a day when he senses something is off. Bali refuses to leave until they catch something, but his father knows that Bali is about to learn a painful lesson.
A mesmerizing dancer's eyes are consumed by relentless flashes that haunt his graceful movements. Seeking a remedy, he dutifully eats pineapple, hoping to expel these unwelcome guests. Yet, as time passes, he becomes trapped in a hazy, aimless drift – his dance now heavy with futility.
In 2020, a coup in Myanmar shut down the country. Gao Gao, unable to attend school, spent his days with friends in the village, going through life as if nothing had changed despite the unrest around him.
A young woman and a young man meet in Istanbul. They both lack the money to live in the foreign city and they are both deaf. They connect, spend time together and do what young people always do – party carelessly and seek intimacy. They feel they are in love. But all is not quite as it seems. She’s from Ukraine, he’s from Russia, and there’s a war going on somewhere back home.
Zhou Zonghan, determined to avenge his daughter who died in a car accident, brings a sharp blade to the home of Ah Zhi, the perpetrator, on the day of his release from prison. However, an unexpected act by Ah Zhi shakes Zhou Zonghan's resolve for revenge...