My Name is JoeMovies like My Name is Joe
- Key Features:
- Romantic relationship, Unemployment, Alcoholism, Social realism, Working-class life, Community, Urban setting, Redemption, Personal struggle, Love and relationships
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Indie film enthusiasts, Drama lovers, Socially conscious viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Despair
My Name is Joe

Two thirtysomethings, unemployed former alcoholic Joe and community health worker Sarah, start a romantic relationship in one of the toughest Glasgow neighbourhoods.
My Name is Joe
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.

Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.

A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.

After murdering his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend, a wealthy ad executive stumbles into a bar and strikes up an uneasy alliance with Joe Curran, a drunken bigot with a bloodlust who works at a local factory.

Punk-rocker turned suburban mom, Kelly, is nostalgic for a life she can no longer have and uncertain of a future she doesn’t yet fit in. Seventeen-year-old Cal is frustrated at his lack of control over the hand he's been dealt. When the two strike up an unlikely friendship, it's the perfect spark needed to thrust them both back to life.

After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.

Toma and Ana meet as students in the literature faculty, and quickly fall in love. But, because of Ana's mental illness, their relationship slowly collapses.

Determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager from a tough background sets out to raise the money for a home.

A man in his mid-20s, still living at home with his mother and stepfather, puts all his eggs in one basket: the girl who works at his local coffee shop. The problem is, she has a serious boyfriend. As they become closer, the line between friendship and intimacy is blurred, and the situation forces both to examine where they are in their lives.

Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.

In 1944 Dean Barry, an American sailor, 23, arrives in Naples, a city destroyed by bombing after the liberation of Italy. Dean meets Lucia, a young and very poor girl with whom he falls madly in love. Two years later, at the end of his service, Dean has to return to New Jersey and Lucia remains in Naples, alone and pregnant.

A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.

A former youth boxing champion, Jimmy McCabe is a man in search of hope but looking in all the wrong places. When he hits rock bottom he turns to his childhood boxing club and the only family he has left: gym owner Bill corner man Eddie and promoter Joe. Back in training, years after anyone thought he was a contender, he risks his life, as he tries to stand tall and regain his place in the world.

Jean, a PE teacher, is forced to live a double life. When a new student arrives and threatens to expose her sexuality, Jean is pushed to extreme lengths to keep her job and her integrity.

International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.

The petite waitress Johnny works and lives in a truck-stop, where she's lonely and longs for love. She develops a crush on the garbage truck driver Krassky, although her sleazy boss Boris warns her that he's gay.

The contemporary story of a priest who launches a centre for troubled youth in a small parish. He is a good priest and is well-liked by his congregation, which remains unaware of his complicated past.

After defecting from North Korea, Loh Kiwan struggles to obtain refugee status in Belgium, where he encounters a dejected woman who has lost all hope.

A teenager falls hard for the female soccer player who has replaced him on the team and attempts to pursue her.

The family of Raymond, his wife Val and her brother Billy live in working-class London district. Also in their family is Val and Billy's mother Janet and grandmother Kath. Billy is a drug addict and Raymond kicks him out of the house, making him live on his own. Raymond is generally a rough and even violent person, and that leads to problems in the life of the family.

When underappreciated video specialist Joe Scheffer is brutally humiliated by office bully Mark McKinney in front of his daughter, Joe begins a quest for personal redemption. He proceeds by enduring a personal makeover and takes martial arts lessons from a B-action star. As news spreads of his rematch with Mark, Joe suddenly finds himself the center of attention, ascending the corporate ladder and growing in popularity.

Raphael is a ghostwriter who takes a job writing for famous footy player Kevin. To his delight and his girlfriend, Murials horror, Kevins current girlfriend is an old (easily rekindled) flame of Raphaels. A freak accident leaves a close friend dead and Raphael is forced to reconsider his priorities.

Freddie Steinmark, an underdog on the gridiron, faces the toughest challenge of his life after leading his team to a championship season.

On a trip to her hometown, workaholic Ally reminisces with her first love, Sean, and starts to question everything about the person she's become. Things only get more confusing when she meets Sean's fiancé, Cassidy, who reminds her of the person she used to be.

At thirteen-years-old, with an unusually high IQ and a knack for observing things about other people, Lou Bertignac is not only the youngest in her class at school; she is also the most unusual. Painfully shy, she has few friends, save for Lucas, whose company helps her get through each day. At home, Lou's life is also difficult: Her mother hasn't left the house in years and her father spends his days crying in the bathroom. Lou's world is dark and sad... That is, until she meets No.

Six different writers wrote a scene each of this romantic comedy featuring the marriage and turbulent relationship of Joseph and Sarah, with Joseph's best friend Frank trying hard to cope with letting the love of his life marry his best friend.

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, he develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

A small town girl is caught between dead-end jobs. A high-profile, successful man becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. The man decides his life is not worth living until the girl is hired for six months to be his new caretaker. Worlds apart and trapped together by circumstance, the two get off to a rocky start. But the girl becomes determined to prove to the man that life is worth living and as they embark on a series of adventures together, each finds their world changing in ways neither of them could begin to imagine.

After a court order sends him to work at a hospice, an ex-criminal strikes up a friendship with a compassionate priest who changes his life.

A self-help seminar inspires a sixty-something woman to romantically pursue her younger co-worker.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

After suffering a brutal defeat and being told he can no longer fight, 37-year-old, scar-ridden prizefighter Louis 'Mountain' Rivera struggles to find a new direction in life

A modern day train hopper fighting to be a successful musician and a single mom battling to maintain custody of her daughter defy their circumstances by coming together in a relationship that may change each others lives forever.

No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.

Slacker Ichiko gets into a fight with her younger sister and begins to live on her own, working the late shift at a 100 yen shop. On her way home, she passes a gym and meets boxer Kano who trains there in silence...

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the football team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it – the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

The story of Joseph, a man plagued by violence and a rage that is driving him to self-destruction. As Joseph's life spirals into turmoil a chance of redemption appears in the form of Hannah, a Christian charity shop worker. Their relationship develops to reveal that Hannah is hiding a secret of her own with devastating results on both of their lives.

When Harry Levine, an aging, unsuccessful Greenwich Village writer, is fired from his job as restaurant doorman, he calls on friend and mentor Jake, ostensibly to collect a long-standing debt.

A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.

An airline pilot and his wife are forced to face the consequences of her alcoholism when her addictions threaten her life and their daughter's safety. While the woman enters detox, her husband must face the truth of his enabling behavior.

An unapologetic former sex worker starts working at a bento stand in a small seaside town, bringing comfort to the lonely souls who come her way.

Raghuvaran, who is unemployed for years, gets his dream job but a powerful rival is keen to put him down. Can he take on his adversary?

Each member of a group of people has a connection to a self-help book authored by a reclusive former football coach.

A nursing student forced to quit school for family reasons winds up taking a job as a doorman in an elite apartment building in New York City, where he sparks to one of his residents.

A pair of women leave their small town and dud boyfriends behind for fun in Madrid.

Benjamin, a rising star filmmaker, is on the brink of premiering his difficult second film No Self at the London Film Festival when Billie, his hard drinking publicist, introduces him to a mesmeric French musician called Noah.

A boxer suffers a serious head injury during a fight, and must deal with the consequences.

The story of an improbable friendship and a social comment on life in Bolivia in the eighties.

A feature length, theatrical documentary on the life of Paul Gascoigne, one of the greatest footballers that ever lived: delving deep into his psyche, vulnerabilities, fears and triumphs.

An alcoholic drifter spends Halloween in his hometown of Albany, New York after returning there for the first time in decades.

When principal Joe Clark takes over decaying Eastside High School, he's faced with students wearing gang colors and graffiti-covered walls. Determined to do anything he must to turn the school around, he expels suspected drug dealers, padlocks doors and demands effort and results from students, staff and parents. Autocratic to a fault, this real-life educator put it all on the line.

Ironworker Nick lives with his wife, Kitty, and three daughters. When he meets a significantly younger woman, Tula, he starts an affair with her, much to the chagrin of his wife, and his life is thrown into upheaval. Kitty kicks Nick out of the house, and he is forced to make some difficult decisions.

James Bowen, a homeless busker and recovering drug addict, has his life transformed when he meets a stray ginger cat.

The true story of João Guilherme Estrella ("Johnny"), a young middle-class bon vivant who became a big-time cocaine dealer in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s.

Story about the remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer and illustrator and a chaotic homeless man, whom he gets to know during a campaign to release two charity workers from prison.

Eve is a catastrophe—low on self-esteem but high on fantasy, especially when it comes to music. Over the course of one Glasgow summer, she meets two similarly rootless souls: posh Cass and fastidious James, and together they form a group.

In a bleak Inverness midwinter, Luisaidh is careening off the rails after the suicide of her best friend. She medicates her misery with joyless sex, chips and a belief in the power of positive drinking. Surrounded by bittersweet memories, she struggles to find someone to talk to or some reason to make life worthwhile at the most stressful time of the year.

Isa and Marie bond while working in a French sweatshop and soon begin sharing an apartment that Marie is watching for a hospitalized mother and daughter. Marie, hoping to avoid a life of struggle and poverty, takes up with Chriss, a nightclub owner whose most attractive asset is his money. Isa recognizes the ultimate futility of the relationship and tries to keep Marie away from him, but her interference puts their friendship at risk.

Waitress Annie has separated from her suicidal alcoholic husband, Glenn. Glenn has become an evangelical Christian, but his erratic attempts at getting back into Annie's life have alarmed her. High school student Arthur works at Annie's restaurant, growing closer to a new kid in town, Lila, after class. When Glenn and Annie's daughter go missing, the whole town searches for her, as he increasingly spirals out of control.

Michael is a 24-year-old who has cerebral palsy and long-term resident of the Carrigmore Residential Home for the Disabled, run by the formidable Eileen. His life is transformed when the maverick Rory O'Shea moves in.

When an alcoholic relapses, causing him to lose his wife and his job, he holds a yard sale on his front lawn in an attempt to start over. A new neighbor might be the key to his return to form.

A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.

After a violent car crash, Marilyn must take care of her man, who suffers from severe head trauma.

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.

Bob Muldoon and Ruth Guthrie, an impassioned young outlaw couple on an extended crime spree, are finally apprehended by lawmen after a shootout in the Texas hills. Although Ruth wounds a local officer, Bob takes the blame. But four years later, Bob escapes from prison and sets out to find Ruth and their daughter, born during his incarceration.

Nineteen-year-old Danny Flynn is imprisoned for his involvement with the I.R.A. in Belfast. He leaves behind his family and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Maggie Hamill. Fourteen years later, Danny is released from prison and returns to his old working class neighborhood to resume his life as a boxer.

In Glasgow, Scotland, while a mysterious pandemic begins to spread around the world, Susan, a brilliant epidemiologist, falls in love with Michael, a skillful cook.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

Charlie is a troublesome 18-year-old who breaks out of a youth drug treatment clinic, but when he returns home to Los Angeles, he's given an intervention by his parents and forced to go to an adult rehab. There, he meets a beautiful but troubled girl, Eva, and is forced to battle with drugs, elusive love and divided parents.

A cop who moonlights as a hit man agrees to kill the hated mother of a desperate drug dealer in exchange for a tumble with the young man's virginal sister.

After breaking up with her dreamboat, Marta finds love with an artist. But life throws a few twists into the mix for the ailing woman and her friends.

NEDs (Non Educated Delinquents) is the story of a young man’s journey from prize-winning schoolboy to knife-carrying teenager. Struggling against the low expectations of those around him, John McGill changes from victim to avenger, scholar to NED, altar boy to glue sniffer. When he attempts to change back again, his new reality and recent past make conformity near impossible and violent self determination near inevitable.

When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake—an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend—they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son.

A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.

To avoid jail, a tax-dodging businessman is sentenced to a year of community service in a homeless shelter.

A terminally ill man falls in love with a woman who has a secret that threatens their time spent together.

Since his wife's death, Andrew Blake is depressed. In an ultimate impetus, he leaves London to go back to France, in the house he met her. This journey through happy days memories won't go as planned.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

Josie, the daughter of the town's wealthiest businessman, faces problems at home and wishes to leave town but is disoriented. Her decision is finalized after she falls asleep in a Target dressing room. She awakens to find herself locked in the store overnight with the janitor, Jim, the town "no hoper" and liar.

An aimless college graduate jumping from one job interview to another — killing time in between with his wisecracking and deadbeat room-mate — falls in love with an actress.

Lilly, a hard working EMT, is only focused on her job and getting into medical school. So when wealthy slacker Jeff enters her life it throws her off course. At first, Lilly wants nothing to do with Jeff or his sense of entitlement and lack of direction. As she spends more time with him, she starts to realize that you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

A Yorkshire coal mine is threatened with closure and the only hope is for the men to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win.

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Julia, a real estate agent, finds an enormous amount of money hidden in a dead man's apartment, a stroke of luck that will force her to face the wrath of the very peculiar inhabitants of the community, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the money.

Dallas, a burdened but headstrong dancer, is determined to get into the best dance school in the country—her late mother’s alma mater. However, that dream is suddenly derailed when the cheeky yet secretly grieving football star, Drayton, crashes into her life with a unique story of his own. Will the two of them be able to grow into their dreams together, or will their dreams be sidelined?

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.

In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver.

One football match on a dirt pitch near Rome becomes a day of reckoning as a young player, his coach and their team's owner wrestle internal demons.

Bomber is an unemployed boat captain. One day he meets Jerry, a manager of boxers who are struck by the force of his fists. That is when they see the chance to win big money.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious ski accident. Dependent on the medical staff and pain relievers, she takes time to look back on a turbulent relationship that she experienced with Georgio.

Sheffield, England. Gaz, a jobless steelworker in need of quick cash persuades his mates to bare it all in a one-night-only strip show.

A gambler’s bet spiraling into chaos, a gangster's prophetic visions, a pop star’s dark entanglement, a doctor’s desperate race against time to rescue his beloved... Four interconnected stories reveal life unfolding through four emotional pillars — joy, passion, grief, and love.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

