Gregory J. Lucas

Filmmaker Todd Verow revisits his own youth in this film. The film's main character is Joe, who, like the director, grew up in Bangor in Maine. Joe, an 18 year old high school senior who longs to move away from poor white trash roots and this town, and dreams of attending art school, lives with his single mother and older sister Theresa on a notorious council estate called "Capehart Projects". Molested at the age of ten, Joe nevertheless decides to keep the incident to himself. He befriends an elderly disabled artist named Victor who hires him as houseboy/model. Joe moves in with Victor in his loft above the local opera house, hoping to escape Bangor with his help. He also works part time at a local market along with his sister, who wants to get out of town as much as he does. For most of high school, Joe has also had a crush on his best friend, Andrew, who plays on the high school football team.

Based on the journals of Nail, a male hustler who reentered the prostitution ring after 10 years in a relationship, Todd Verow's experimental documentary (shot entirely on a cell phone camera) examines the changing landscape of male prostitution. Nail's narrated journal entries accompany dreamy and abstract imagery shot all over the world. Verow also explores how the Internet has shaped the sex trade.

On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers. Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be committed were Holocaust survivors. A legend says that to this day, the survivors have been communicating with the ghosts of the village. Forgiveness tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel, only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin. Flashbacks and flashforwards reveal the events that led up to his hospitalization.

As a young man, Dorian Gray's beguiling innocence captured the eye of famed artist Basil Hallward. As the two enter into a close friendship, Basil crafts a remarkable piece of art that seems to capture Dorian's essence as much as it does the artist's obsession. Stricken by the remarkable beauty of the piece and lamenting his own inevitable loss of youth, the troubled Dorian makes a wish that the artistic rendering of him bear the weathers of time while he remains forever youthful. Later, as Dorian strikes up a friendship with Lord Henry, wealthy entitlement, decadence, and obsessive pleasure lead the handsome young noble down a dark path of drugs and dangerous friendships. When Basil attempts to help his old friend, the artist's nobility ends up costing him his life. Through it all, Dorian remains as hypnotically handsome as ever.

Six very different New Yorkers go about their lives without realizing the impact they're having on one another—yet. A mysterious web of coincidences will gradually draw these strangers closer, changing the course of their lives forever.