Under the Influence

Frictions develop when Yisroel "Izzy" Jonigkeyt, a Chassidic Jew from Crown Heights, travels to San Francisco to visit Polish-born Catholic friend Marek Wisniewski with the intent of discovering why a Bay Area art-world iconoclast named Harry Kierk seeks to destroy a lifetime's worth of his own work. As the visit progresses, Izzy and Marek discover for the first time that complex historical baggage impinges on their curious friendship and, soon, they begin to understand why Kierk is driven towards destruction. Continued encounters with Marek's vaguely anti-Semitic cousin Irek (who is their only gateway to contact Kierk) only compound these tensions.

During the course of one night, two strangers, a lonely waif and a prodigal poet, form an unexpected connection.

At the dawn of the second lockdown in Brussels, Simon, a young documentary filmmaker, befriends a comedic duo of coronavirus fighters named the Covid Boys (Oscar and Eduard).

When he can't afford a retirement community, a nursing home, or a caregiver, Rudy Hendricks and his husband are forced to move back to his hometown in Kentucky to care for his ailing conservative father. Along the way, he grows closer with his single-mother sister and his gay but repressed best friend who never left home.

Martin, a theater director obsessed with his career, is putting on a production of Peter Weiss's The Investigation. He takes his cast and assistant on a research trip to Auschwitz. But in addition to the big issue of the Holocaust, they all pursue their own private agendas. When the Polish Jew Goska, a B-movie star, gets into the mix, the situation escalates. A very black comedy.