Three Steps Into the Emptiness

The Business

September 2005 •English

During the '80s, a young man named Frankie dreams of escaping London's South East region, and his mother's thug of a boyfriend gives him just the opportunity. After beating up the abusive beau, Frankie runs off to Spain, where he lands a job delivering a package to the dapper Playboy Charlie, a gangster who takes him under his wing. Working as Charlie's driver, Frankie is immersed in a world of fast cars and pretty women -- but all the excess could be his undoing.

White Lightning

August 1973 •English

An ex-con teams up with federal agents to help them with breaking up a moonshine ring.

Das Herz von St. Pauli

December 1957 •German

Docks of Hamburg

October 1928 •German

When Hamburg ship's mate Klaus Brandt catches a thief one night at the port, his downfall is pre-ordained. For the thief turns out to be a young, attractive woman and the otherwise upright sailor allows her to slip away. Jenny is the star of a local dive bar, with a side-line in smuggling.

Blood Diamond

December 2006 •English

An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son, conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.

Monique

January 2023 •English

A young woman, Abby, makes a deal with her younger brother Danny, allowing him to seek refuge at her apartment after an illegal job gone wrong. However, as days pass, she begins to question the faithfulness of his side of the deal, as well as the oddly intimate relationship he shares with his mannequin-shaped package.

The Lark Farm

January 2007 •Italian

The Lark Farm is set in a small Turkish town in 1915. It deals with the genocide of Armenians, looking closely at the fortunes, or rather, misfortunes of one wealthy Armenian family.

The Quiet Woman

March 1951 •English

The former wife of a criminal moves to a coastal town and takes over the running of a bar known as The Quiet Woman. She becomes outraged when she discovers the previous owner had allowed local smugglers to use it as a base. She soon has become romantically involved with one of the smugglers, which causes enormous problems when a customs officer turns up, followed closely by her former husband.

Ammunition Smuggling on the Mexican Border: Incidents of the Mexican Revolution

September 1914 •English

Around the film hang fascinating questions about border politics, which I’ll touch on in an introduction before the screening. One of Eugene Buck’s motivations for making the film may have been his rough cross-examination during his kidnappers’ first trials, in October 1913, when defense attorneys cast him as a confused and unreliable witness against idealistic freedom fighters. On film he could reproduce the pursuit, the shootouts, his kidnapping, and his friend’s murder just as he had testified. Reenacting the crime on film may have been the best revenge—and a way to honor the sacrifice of Deputy Ortiz, a twenty-year police veteran and, for the era, a rare Mexican American lawman.

Quills

November 2000 •English

A nobleman with a literary flair, the Marquis de Sade lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid smuggles his erotic stories to a printer, defying orders from the asylum's resident priest. The titillating passages whip all of France into a sexual frenzy, until a fiercely conservative doctor tries to put an end to the fun.

Captain Khorshid

March 1987 •Persian

Captain Khorshid is a sailor who although only having one hand, manages to sail his little boat. In his village, due to its hot climate and hard living conditions, dangerous criminals are sent into exile. They want to escape from the area, so they ask a middleman to strike a deal with Khorshid. Khorshid is asked to illegally take them out of the country with his boat. At first he is reluctant, but because of the hardships of living he accepts the job.

True North

September 2007 •English

The crew of a bankrupt Scottish trawler turn to smuggling illegal immigrants over the stormy waters of the North Sea.

The Longest Yard

May 2005 •English

Disgraced pro football quarterback Paul Crewe lands in a Texas federal penitentiary, where manipulative Warden Hazen recruits him to advise the institution's football team of prison guards. Crewe suggests a tune-up game which lands him quarterbacking a crew of inmates in a game against the guards. Aided by incarcerated ex-NFL coach and player Nate Scarborough, Crewe and his team must overcome not only the bloodthirstiness of the opposition, but also the corrupt warden trying to fix the game against them.

The Kid

August 2014 •Spanish

Two youths, Niño and Compi, enter the world of drug smuggling in the Strait of Gibraltar; while two police officers, Jesús and Eva, try to eradicate the contraband.

The Narrow Corner

July 1933 •English

An Englishman sought for murder, tries to escape fate to South Seas island.

Cargo

February 2006 •English

A young backpacker gets into some trouble in Africa and stows away on a cargo ship heading to Europe.

Johny Mera Naam

November 1970 •Hindi

When a gangster named Heeralal gets arrested, he befriends Johny, a petty thief, in prison. He seeks Jony's help in executing his mission of smuggling a few diamonds. Johny, however, is an undercover CID officer named Sohan.

Atoosa's Laughters

April 2016 •Persian

Twelve strangers embark on the Trans-Asia Express, a four-day train journey from Tehran to Istanbul. But not everyone is who they pretend to be or seem to be,

La Traversée de Paris

October 1956 •French

Two unlikely companions must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris.

Traffic

December 2000 •English

An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.