Acting
Mayor Tom Kane sits like a spider at the center of Chicago's web of power; a web built on a covenant with the people. They want to be led, they want disputes settled, jobs dispensed, and loyalties rewarded. If he achieves all this through deception and immorality, so be it. As long as he gets the job done, they look the other way. Yet despite being the most effective mayor in recent history, a degenerative brain disorder is ripping everything away from him. He can't trust his memory, his closest allies, or even himself.
On a flight home to Chicago for a family wedding, childhood friends Josh and Molly innocently agree to fake a wedding engagement to make Josh's dying father happy. Things quickly get out of hand with their two boisterous families, and a series of events causes them to pretend to be a couple and start planning a phony wedding. When the playacting begins to foster real feelings, the two must make some serious decisions: Split up and return to their lives in LA, or make a life as a couple back in Chicago?
The story of two people caught in the routines of work and circles of friends. The days begin with an alarm and end with the fading sound of a television. Ron Hogan, a 28-year-old ATM parts purchaser, and Stacy Ryan, a 27-year-old, oddly charming courier, meet through a matchmaking Internet service and go through the routine of falling for one another.
After an old friend's visit ends, Lori is feeling a bit down. Bored with her job, agitated at home, and frustrated with money problems, Lori takes out her anger on her ex-marine boyfriend, Anson. However, after a broken mug, a trip to the zoo and a case of the shingles Lori's mood changes.
Children Without Parents is a work of autobiographical fiction, where the filmmaker Casey Puccini explores his relationship with his brazen siblings in the days right after their father’s suicide. The orphaned adults soon enter into a match of emotional destruction, targeting each other’s insecurities, and channeling the worst of their posthumous father’s personality. Puccini plays himself in this heartfelt pre-enactment, revealing the destructive underbelly of family dynamics.
More poseur than visionary, a filmmaker struggles to keep his creativity alive as he bumbles through the production of his sophomore film. Instead of rising to the challenge, he conflicts with his cast and crew, inevitably becoming a pathetically manipulative prick who no one can stand being around. A cast of Chicago talents star in this dark comedy about the consequences of pernicious narcissism developed from unchecked mediocrity in the world of independent film.
Leading very separate lives, Christy and her boyfriend Buddy live together in her parent's basement with their baby Mikey. As Christy, a waitress and aspiring writer, and Buddy, a plumber's apprentice, struggle with the realities of their lives, questions are formed about obligations, consequences, and all the identities we employ to get through the day.
