Portmanteau
see all genres ›Otherwise known as omnibus or anthology films, this subgenre named after a many-compartmented travel case offers the pleasures of several stories, often overlapping in narrative or theme, within one package.
Watch Portmanteau Films
Genres / Drama / Portmanteau
-
Poison
The second feature directed by Todd Haynes, POISON is a groundbreaking American independent film and was the most fervently debated film of the 1990s as well as a trailblazing landmark of queer cinema. A work of immense visual invention, Haynes' spectacular follow-up to his legendary SUPERSTAR:...Watch Movie
-
Junk Food
Blending widescreen cinematography with digital video, JUNK FOOD casts an unblinking but painterly eye over the darkest, most brutal fringes of contemporary Japanese society. JUNK FOOD depicts the hitherto unseen world of aberrant sexuality and savage violence that emerges when the sun goes down...Watch Movie
-
Jellyfish
Poignant, often witty and exceedingly cinematic, JELLYFISH tells the story of three very different Tel Aviv women whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a child apparently abandoned at a local beach. Batya is one of the...Watch Movie
-
Open
The first American film to ever win the Teddy Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, OPEN weaves together tales of a young hermaphrodite's journey through the largest mall in America, a couple mending themselves into one entity through plastic surgery, and the effects of hormone use on sex,...Watch Movie
-
The Black Balloon
While trying to move forty kids six blocks in New York City alone, a stressed man accidentally loses a bouquet of a hundred balloons. In that bouquet, a lone black balloon scurries free. It dies and comes back to life, returning to the city cruising for a companion. On the...Watch Movie
-
Magical Girl
An unemployed father seeking a gift for his dying daughter, a disturbed woman with a dark past, and a math teacher turned criminal find their fates bound together in this bracing thriller from Spanish director Carlos Vermut. When his young daughter is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, Luis...Watch Movie
-
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins
Seven comic episodes adapted from one of the most read books in the world, the Bible. Each episode highlights one of the seven deadly sins and a hilarious comeuppance for the sinner. This comic portmanteau stars the cream of British talent and is written by one of Britain's...Watch Movie
-
Crush
CRUSH is an anthology of four stories that examine the many feelings of longing and love. In DON'T ASK, a devoted couple is forced to confront their feelings regarding love and war when one of them begins to question his military service. The obsessions of an eager teenager lead him into the arms...Watch Movie
-
The Guatemalan Handshake
One of the Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, writer-director Todd Rohal charts strange new cinematic waters with his madly innovative feature debut, THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE. Winner of Special Jury Prizes at Slamdance and Torino, Rohal's vivacious feast...Watch Movie
-
Nocturna Artificialia
A dreamer is seduced by the mystery of the city at night. He leaves his room and goes into the street, where a tram-car carries him away. “As with much of their later work, it’s impossible to provide a coherent synopsis of the earliest surviving film by the Quay Brothers, as...Watch Movie
-
Local Color
A young artist seeks inspiration from an older man (and freedom from his own father) in this wise and warm coming-of-age tale, one infused with a love for impressionist art and loosely based on director/screenwriter/artist George Gallo's own life. The quiet, dreamy John would rather visit museums...Watch Movie
-
It Happened in the Park
There is something uniquely fascinating about a large municipal park, with its natural beauties, its formal arrangements and its array of visitors to be observed. Amid its inducements to serenity, one may invariably catch intriguing glimpses of people and their behavior that...Watch Movie
-
Ship of Theseus
If the parts of a ship are replaced, bit-by-bit, is it still the same ship? A celebrated experimental photographer struggles with the loss of her intuitive genius as an unexpected aftermath of a physical change; an intellectual monk confronting a complex ethical dilemma with a long held ideology,...Watch Movie
-
The River
Critically acclaimed THE RIVER flows between a dozen diverse, well-etched characters in a small Finnish town, including a clandestine gay couple, a factory worker and his adulturious wife and a suicidal young mother. It is a rich and insightful look at ordinary lives unfolding over the short time...Watch Movie
-
Two Story
An anonymous man and woman slowly weave in and out of the various rooms of a two story loft, never speaking and always eclipsing each other. The ambiguity of their relationship forces the viewer to question the meaning of their presence in the home, as well as the cyclical nature of relationships...Watch Movie
-
Centro Historico
Commissioned to promote the sleepy Portuguese city of Guimarães as a 2012 European Capital of Culture, this omnibus curio brings together an illustrious quartet of international cinema auteurs and invites them to roam through picturesque town squares, abandoned industrial...Watch Movie
-
To Die (or Not)
Seven individual stories end in the death of the main character, that is until fate (in the form of Ventura Pons, the film maker) intervenes and re-writes history. TO DIE (OR NOT) gives us seven stories that are separate yet intertwined in their outcome. A desperate director with a creative...Watch Movie
