Plot

The needy and traumatized Theresa, who was raped when she was fourteen year-old, meets the handsome John on the street after an accident during a performance on the stage of her friend Kim asking for a low-budget hotel. She offers a ride to a nearby hostel, they date and she brings him home, where he offers Ecstasy with wine to her. Kim advises her that John is a dangerous drug-dealer that has been missing for five years after the death of his girlfriend also called Theresa, but Theresa stays with him, practicing mutual masturbation, sharing her fears and fantasies and being permanently drugged. When John's friend Billy visits Theresa, he reveals dark secrets about her boyfriend, leading to a tragic end.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Love, drugs and murder are the backdrop for Orphans and Angels, a new film noir from New Zealand by first-time director/writer/editor Harold Brodie. Our story begins with the return of John after a five-year mysterious absence. A chance meeting in a bar and a girl on the street set the stage for this dark and passionate tale. Theresa is immediately taken by John's charm. A rape victim from childhood, she is shy and somewhat an innocent who is ever hopeful that she will fall in love. Theresa offers John a ride to a youth hostel, meets him for drinks, and soon takes him home. Together in her apartment, they take Ecstasy, the first time for Theresa. Through a maze of drugs, wine and warmth, she shares her troubled past, her hopes and her dreams with John, all the while slipping more and more under his control. Slowly John's haunted past begins to filter into their dream world and Theresa's life is changed forever. Kim, Theresa's best friend, and Billy, John's partner in drug dealing, eventually pull Theresa out from under John's spell, but only at a price greater than life itself.—Anonymous