Lumière and Company
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou's convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch's bizarre miniature epic.
Costa-Gavras
Zhang Yimou
Wim Wenders
Claude Miller
Spike Lee
Lasse Hallström
David Lynch
Michael Haneke
Arthur Penn
Theo Angelopoulos
Liv Ullmann
James Ivory
Claude Lelouch
Cédric Klapisch
John Boorman
Youssef Chahine
Idrissa Ouedraogo
Fernando Trueba
Régis Wargnier
Peter Greenaway
Francis Girod
Alain Corneau
Bigas Luna
Patrice Leconte
Ismail Merchant
Helma Sanders-Brahms
Raymond Depardon
Hugh Hudson
Andrei Konchalovsky
Gabriel Axel
Jacques Rivette
Merzak Allouache
Jerry Schatzberg
Vicente Aranda
Jaco Van Dormael
Yoshishige Yoshida
Abbas Kiarostami
Lucian Pintilie
Gaston Kaboré
Nadine Trintignant
Sarah Moon
Casts & Crew
Alan Rickman
Liam Neeson
Stephen Rea
Sven Nykvist
Neil Jordan
Aidan Quinn
Isabelle Huppert
Also Directed by Costa-Gavras
The head of a giant European investment bank desperately clings to power when an American hedge fund company tries to buy them out.
In this cynical comedy, an renowned, out-of-work, unpublished "underground" writer from formerly Communist Poland is driven to unusually desperate measures in order to get his work published. Stan (Jiri Menzel) has been living in the attic apartment of his ex-wife's home, which he shares with a journalist friend (Andre Dussolier). One day, he has an accident which convinces his ex-wife and her current husband (Anna Romantowska and Pierre Arditi) that he's suicidal, and they hastily contact a media representative to see if some sort of publicity can't be arranged so that Stan's work can be published and they can benefit, if not from the money, then from their association with him. The organization they contact says that they will be happy to publish his writings, if he will commit suicide live, on television, in St. Peter's square, while the Pope is delivering an address.
Thirteen filmmakers talk about Henri Langlois and their relationship with him.
The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement by his blackmailers.
Using the interrogation of a US counterinsurgency agent as a backdrop, the film explores the consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas.
Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is horrified by what he sees in the death camps. he is then shocked to learn that the process he used to purify water for his troops by using Zyklon-B, is now used to kill people in gas chambers.
A misguided museum guard who loses his job and then tries to get it back at gunpoint is thrown into the fierce world of ratings-driven TV gone mad.
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his "À propos de Nice" from 1930.
A chemist loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.
Also Directed by Zhang Yimou
Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.
One man defeated three assassins who sought to murder the most powerful warlord in pre-unified China.
Turandot at the Forbidden City is a 1998 live production of Puccini's opera Turandot directed by Zhang Yimou. The opera was performed by Giovanna Casolla, Audrey Stottler, and Sharon Sweet alternating as Princess Turandot; Kristján Jóhannsson, Sergej Larin and Lando Bartolini as Calàf; and Barbara Frittoli, Angela-Maria Blasi and Barbara Hendricks as Liù, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as his wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.
Zhao is an old laid-off worker who's dreaming of getting married. After trying unsuccessful proposals, he finally pair off with a gargantuan divorcée with two children. She, however, demands a lavish wedding and that Zhao finds a job and another place to stay for her blind step-daughter. Pretending he's the General Manager of a non-existent posh hotel "Happy Times", Zhao had to find ways and means of keeping both mother and stepdaughter happy.
Wang is a gloomy, cunning and avaricious noodle shop owner in a desert town in China. His neglected, sharp-tongued wife is involved in a secret affair with Li, one of Wang’s employees. A timid man, Li reluctantly keeps the gun his lover has bought to kill her husband. But Wang is watching their every move. He bribes patrol officer Zhang to murder the illicit couple. It seems like a perfect plan: the affair will come to a cruel, bloody but satisfying end… or so he thinks. The equally wicked Zhang has an agenda of his own. As the plot twists, more blood will flow, and ever greater violence will erupt…
Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.
The tragic story of a Tang Dynasty imperial consort who was the favorite of the Emperor Xuanzong.
A spy drama film set during the wartime.
Also Directed by Wim Wenders
A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema. The film tells the story of the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the "bioskop", an early version of the film projector.
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
Complete recording of Pina Bausch's piece Vollmond (Full Moon) by Wim Wenders.
Thirteen filmmakers talk about Henri Langlois and their relationship with him.
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
When Willie Nelson and album producer Daniel Lanois set out to create a cinematic-sounding album, "Teatro", they took over a disused movie theatre in Oxnard, California, and pictured its dusty glory on the cover art. Recorded as-live in situ amid the red velvet seats, Teatro sees Nelson working extensively with his frequent collaborator Emmylou Harris, who joins him for duets and on backing vocals. Recorded 1998. Wim Wenders filmed the event.
TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT EDWARD HOPPER is an immersive experience in 3D, that takes its viewers on a journey into the world of Hopper, sharpening their senses for some aspects of his unique work.
Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.
Also Directed by Claude Miller
This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films. When the young and overly sensitive filmmaker Julien screens his new DV art-film starring his girlfriend Lili (Swimming Pool's Ludivine Sagnier) --a sexy young local girl--to his famous actress mother Mado, and her lover Brice, an accomplished film director, an unraveling of the delicate peace in their house begins. The graceful beauty Lili, who dreams of becoming a famous actress like Mado, is immediately fascinated by Brice, who gladly falls prey to her charms.
In a small town in post-World-War-II France, an unhappy sixteen-year-old (Janine Castang) tries to escape her dreary situation by any means at her disposal. Three successive friends (Michel Davenne, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette Dargelos, a photographer and fellow prisoner) help her learn from her mistakes.
In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young accompanist named Sophie Vasseur gets a job with famed singer Irene Brice. As Irene's husband Charles, a businessman collaborating with the Nazis, wrestles with his conscience, Sophie becomes obsessed with Irene, taking on the role of maid as well as accompanist, living life vicariously through Irene's triumphs and affairs.
A schoolboy Nicholas always worries about something. When he goes on a school skiing trip, all his visions and nightmares take him over.
A young student, alone in Paris, is engaged in strange and bloody experiences of which she is both the authorizer and the victim.
An old psychiatrist finds out that he is likely to suffer a second and probably fatal heart attack in the near future. As a consequence he becomes determined to seduce Odile, a young woman he first encounters in a railway compartment.
A French video artist traverses Canada on a train that takes her from the east to the west through the snow. This journey leads her to encounter the last girlfriend of her ex-husband, an internationally respected showman who is now dead. Each of the two women will try to understand how the "man of their life" loved and lived with the other. See how they dance.
This finely acted, delicate and provocative new film by one of France’s most impressive filmmakers—working here with his son, Nathan—depicts the troubled life of an adopted boy who, as a taciturn adult, visits his birth mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.
This French documentary is comprised of almost 300 clips from the past 100 years of cinema Francaise. The images within the documentary are free flowing and not in chronological order; they are also not hindered with unnecessary narration or lengthy introductions. The film represents the collaborative efforts of a collective of the country's finest filmmakers.
The unhappily married woman struggles to break free from social pressures and her boring suburban setting.
Also Directed by Spike Lee
Moses and Kitch, two young black men, chat their way through a long, aimless day on a Chicago street corner. Periodically ducking bullets and managing visits from a genial but ominous stranger and an overtly hostile police officer, Moses and Kitch rely on their poetic, funny, at times profane banter to get them through a day that is a hopeless retread of every other day, even as they continue to dream of their deliverance.
Mike Tyson's one-man show is a fascinating journey into his storied life and career. MIKE TYSON: UNDISPUTED TRUTH is a rare, personal look inside the life and mind of one of the most feared men ever to wear the heavyweight crown. Directed by Academy Award® nominee Spike Lee, this riveting one-man show goes beyond the headlines, behind the scenes and between the lines to deliver a must-see theatrical knockout.
Pavarotti And Friends for the Children of Liberia
From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.
Fired from his job, a former executive turns to impregnating wealthy lesbians for profit.
Spike Lee takes us into the world of NBA nicknames, focusing on how Ray Allen's starring role in Lee's HE GOT GAME, forever associated him with his character, Jesus Shuttlesworth.
When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.
When University of Missouri football players threatened to boycott their game with Brigham Young University last November unless president Tim Wolfe resigned, they made news far beyond the sports pages and Columbia, Missouri. But that was only one chapter in a tale that began long before that - a tale that director Spike Lee unspools in this Lil' Joints documentary for ESPN Films. Yes, the athletes played a significant role in forcing Wolfe's resignation, but it was really the female organizers of the Concerned Student 1950 movement, as well as a man, Jonathan Butler, willing to starve himself, who stood tallest in the confrontation with institutional racism at Mizzou. Indeed, their courage and resolve brings hope to the message chanted at the end of the film: "We gonna be all right."
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Also Directed by Lasse Hallström
An emotionally-beaten man with his young daughter moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland to reclaim his life.
With a reputation for seducing members of the opposite sex, regardless of their marital status, a notorious womanizer discovers a beauty who seems impervious to his charms. However, as he continues to pursue the indifferent lady, he finds himself falling in love.
A fisheries expert is approached by a consultant to help realize a sheik's vision of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to the desert and embarks on an upstream journey of faith and fish to prove the impossible possible.
The story of the children who live in Bullerbyn, Sweden, through the spring and summer months.
In 1944, Cederqvist comes to a small cloth factory to see how the all-women employees can work more efficiently. At the beginning he is greeted with suspicion and his efforts at courting the young ladies are futile. But as soon as he buys himself a car it becomes much easier, especially since he has the power to relocate people to an easier line of work. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
Arne, Calle, and Gunnar are friends, probably in their twenties. One telephones the others, and they decide to visit a nightclub. They hope to meet women and have sex. After they arrive at the club, each man meets with a certain degree of success or failure. Calle particularly is frustrated, for no woman agrees to dance with him. Meanwhile, Arne and Gunnar are busily conversing with women. Eventually the friends all leave with lady friends in tow, and spend the night in various apartments. In the morning, the couples depart differently. One couple has bonded amicably, another tenuously, and the third not at all. The next day, the men reconnect, and decide to try their luck again. Written by veloc
A story centered around an Indian family who moves to France and opens a restaurant across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant.
A dog goes on quest to discover his purpose in life over the course of several lifetimes with multiple owners.
In one of her best-ever roles, Julia Roberts is Grace, whose reaction to the infidelities of Eddie (Dennis Quaid) turns the lives and loves of the people around her into something like falling dominoes. Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Kyra Sedgwick and others in "the year's best ensemble of characters" (Jack Matthews, 'Newsday') co-star in this juicy, truthful story written by Callie Khouri
A fable of emotional liberation and chocolate. A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of Boat Gypsies float down the river the prejudices of the Mayor leads to a crisis.
Also Directed by David Lynch
Short documentary of David Lynch building a lamp.
Short piece for the collective film "One Dream Rush."
A series of eight crudely animated shorts written, directed, and voiced by director David Lynch in 2002. The series details the daily routines of a dull-witted white trash man. The man lives in a house along with his frazzled wife and squeaky-voiced child, both of whom are nameless as is the man in the shows.
A short film by David Lynch featuring his son Austin, originally filmed for davidlynch.com
A surreal short film that Lynch made for the 2008 Twin Peaks Festival. It only screened once and is in Black and white. In this film, Lynch is speaking backwards in what looks to be a cross between the floors of Eraserhead and the Twin Peaks Red Room. Sitting next to him is a plastic doll with the face of Laura Palmer.
A short film directed by David Lynch.
A film about a flight of stairs. Directed by David Lynch.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgangers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.
Two young women find themselves in a dark room where there is a distinctly strange feeling.
Also Directed by Michael Haneke
When Anna and her family arrive at their holiday home, they find it occupied by strangers. This confrontation is just the beginning of a painful learning process.
The disabled ex-soldier Andreas Pum lost a leg for emperor and father land. After leaving the army he receives a license and a drehorgel. One day he gets into a controversy with a welldressed gentleman, disturbs the public order, and hits a policeman. Andreas Pum goes to jail, loses his license and becomes toilet guard in the Cafe Halali after his release. Only at the moment of death he recognizes that he was always too decent and too obedient.
A middle-class family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.
A 14-year-old video enthusiast is so caught up in film fantasy that he can no longer relate to the real world, to such an extent that he commits murder and records an on-camera confession for his parents.
Described as an answer to Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, Fraulein tells the story of a German woman and a former French prisoner of war living in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, Haneke’s heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.
This two-part drama examines the fate of Haneke’s own generation which came of age after World War II. The first part depicts the generational gap between 1950s teenagers and their parents while the second shows this same group of characters twenty years later as they have grown up to be dysfunctional and suicidal adults. Regarded as the most significant of Haneke’s early works, Lemmings contains incipient treatments of many of the themes he would later elaborate on in his theatrical features.
The emotional story of an adulterous relationship between a journalist and a teacher.
A modern classic filled with new Avant-Garde techniques never seen before.
Autumn 1990. A young Austrian goes to a party held by some of his friends and provokes a hideous bloodbath. As a reflection of daily reality and its crass representation in the horror of one extreme crime, Michael Haneke has mounted material taken from one whole day of ORF (Austrian TV) broadcasting, using it in proportion to the time allocated to it in the programme schedule.
A married couple is terrorized by a series of videotapes planted on their front porch.
Also Directed by Arthur Penn
After a long absence, artist Margaret Church returns to her aging parent's home to finish a portrait of them, only to to discover that her parents have decided to sell their home.
When vigilante land baron David Braxton hangs one of the best friends of cattle rustler Tom Logan, Logan's gang decides to get even by purchasing a small farm next to Braxton's ranch. From there the rustlers begin stealing horses, using the farm as a front for their operation. Determined to stop the thefts at any cost, Braxton retains the services of eccentric sharpshooter Robert E. Lee Clayton, who begins ruthlessly taking down Logan's gang.
A Texan with a secret past searches Europe with his son after the KGB kidnaps his wife.
The escape of Bubber Reeves from prison affects the inhabitants of a small Southern town.
A cinematic adaption of Arlo Guthrie's classic song story.
A fledgling actress is lured to a remote mansion for a screen-test, soon discovering she is actually a prisoner in the middle of a blackmail plot.
Lord Fancourt Babberley is forced to disguise himself as a woman - his aunt from Brazil, "where the nuts come from".
A drama set in 1956, during the unsuccessful Hungarian uprising against the Russians.
Based on a true story, Donald Bashor robs and bludgeons two women to their deaths. While committing the crimes he maintans a normal existence with his girlfriend Florry.
An emotional and thrilling tale of life and death behind the walls of a maximum security prison. From the acclaimed director of 'Bonnie and Clyde', and featuring a powerful international cast.
Also Directed by Theo Angelopoulos
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
An old communist returns to Greece after 32 years in the Soviet Union. However, things aren't the way he had hoped for.
The team of journalists of a radio show asks women on the street for their definition of the ideal man in order to conduct a search for someone to fill the bill, a specimen who has all these characteristics. The lucky guy will spend a few hours in the company of a well-known movie star
Based on some historical events, the film gives a romanticized biography of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a Greek historical hero serving as a metaphor for Greece herself. Based on a circular view of history, the film presents conflicting ideologies - primitive communism, anarchism, chiefdom or kingdom, personality cult - and shows the institutions of property and power in a bad light.
A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the USA. The main character is Eleni, who is claimed and claims the absoluteness of love. At the same time the film is a long journey into the vast history and the events of the last fifty years that left their mark on the 20th century. The characters in the film move as though in a dream. The dust of time confuses memories. A searches for them and experiences them in the present.
This is the first film of Theo Angelopoulos' trilogy. The story starts in 1919 with some greek refugees from Odessa arriving somewhere near Thessaloniki. Among these people are two small kids, Alexis and Eleni. Eleni is an orphan and she is also taken care by Alexis' family. The refugees build a small village somewhere near a river and we watch as the kids grow up and fall in love. But difficult times of dictatorship and war are coming...
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
A documentary shown on Greek television in 1981, that describes the plight of Greek villages abandoned by their inhabitants. Some scenes from this film were rewritten into Voyage to Cythera.
Greek director Theo Angelopoulos takes the viewer on a tour through Athens in this episode of the TV series Capitali culturali d'Europa.
A segment from “Invisible World” (2012)
Also Directed by Liv Ullmann
Kristin Lavransdatter is a 1995 Norwegian film directed by Liv Ullman, featuring Elisabeth Matheson, Bjørn Skagestad, Jørgen Langhelle, Lena Endre and Sverre Anker Ousdal, based on Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. It was the Norwegian entry to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1996.
Five conversations frame a flawed marriage in this film written by Ingmar Bergman about his parents. Guilt-ridden wife Anna (Pernilla August) divulges an extramarital affair to a priest, her uncle Jacob (Max von Sydow). He presses her to confess her sins to her husband, Henrik. As the film moves back and forth in time, the notion of truth is tested. Tomas, the lover, and Henrik will find that Anna's confessions do not absolve anyone, and have the power to inflict more pain.
Liv Ulmann's directorial debut also had her co-authoring the screenplay (with poet Peter Poulsen) as based on a Henri Nathansen's 1932 novel about an affluent late 19th century Jewish merchant family in Copenhagen. Ulmann focuses on strong-willed daughter Sofie's progress through life: a love affair with a gentile painter, an arranged marriage , childbirth and ever more fateful challenges.
Scripted by Ingmar Bergman, this very personal film is about a destructive affair which wrecks the marriage of an actress (Marianne) and musician (Markus). Wanting to continue the affair, Marianne moves in with her lover. But she is tormented by Markus' decision not to let her have custody of their daughter. Finally Markus announces he may have a solution to the stalemate, but this leads to deception, lies and ultimately, tragedy.
Over the course of a midsummer night in Fermanagh in 1890, an unsettled daughter of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy encourages her father's valet to seduce her.
A unique anthology of six short vignettes on the subject of love, all of them written, directed and produced by women.
Also Directed by James Ivory
The last movie from the team of Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in 1930s Shanghai, "The White Countess" is both Sofia (Natasha Richardson), a fallen member of the Russian aristocracy, and a nightclub created by a blind American diplomat named Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), who asks Sofia to be the centerpiece of the world he wants to create.
Based on the play by William Shakespeare.
Eugenia Young is an intelligent, sophisticated expatriate who originally hails from New England in the US. Along with her artist brother, she returns to her family in the US for her own selfish gains.
The parallel story of Anne and her grand-aunt Olivia in their experiences in India
The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.
An English novelist travels to Bombay to watch one of her novels translated to film. She chases after the movie's leading man while the screenwriter chases after her.
"Roseland" is made up of three stories, sometimes connecting, all set in the famed New York dance palace, and all having the same theme: finding the right dance partner.
Meet the denizens of New York City: artists, prostitutes, saints, and seers. All are aspiring toward either fame or oblivion, and hoping for love and acceptance. Instead they find high rents, faithless partners, and dead-end careers.
Follows the fortunes of a young teacher Prem (Shashi Kapoor) who isn't ready to take on the responsibilities of his arranged marriage.
Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.
Also Directed by Claude Lelouch
A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his new girlfriend. But his life is turned upside down the day that his best friend tries to reconcile him with his family by telling them a big lie.
François Toledo, married businessman and father, falls head-over-heels in love with Janine, a work colleague. However, he is soon found out: after three dates, he strangles some prostitutes, when, the victim of blackmail, he becomes dishonored. He is taken to court, and sentenced to be killed by a guillotine.
In seven different parts, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamees army during the Vietnam-war.
This film is best understood after watching Albert Lamorisse's Baadeh Sabah, an ostentatious propaganda film of the same commission that was originally rejected for it's inadequate portrayal of Iran's nouveau-modernism (urban youth, industrial marvels) and it's overly-lyrical style. In LeLouche's rendition, there are no such inadequacies. The focus is on culture - heritage, modernity and (what soon would be named) Westernization. Past and present meet - veils and miniskirts, camels and helicopters, remains of ancient Persia, the highlights of Islamic art, caviar and the oil fields and gas pumps.
The movie follows the lives of a woman and a man starting from several generations earlier. The story spans a whole century and several continents.
Françoise has gone into business seducing men whose wives want to divorce them, and who need incriminating evidence against them. In addition, she has a little blackmail operation going on on the side with politicians who can't afford a scandal. She got started on this business after she was raped, and hasn't looked back since. Now the police are on her trail, and she avails herself of the services of a couple who make a profession of hiding wanted criminals. At the hideout, she meets Simon, a second-generation mobster. As the police close in, Françoise and Simon go on the run together, pulling off occasional heists for operating money. Before long, they have also fallen in love.
The film is a road movie that follows a middle aged man who gives a young woman a lift. On the car radio, news bulletins warn the population against a recently escaped sadist who is known to prey on young women and children. Lelouch often cuts away from the main story, if only briefly, to parallel events that are not necessarily crucial to the story but illustrate what is suggested by the radio.
Famous TV newscaster Robert Colomb is married to Catherine, but is continually unfaithful to her. Then he meets, and becomes fascinated with Candice.
Robert #1 is played by Charles Denner, while Robert #2 is played by Jacques Villeret. Beyond their common name, the two Roberts are as different as night and day. Oh, there is one more resemblance: both Roberts are lonely, and both hope to meet suitable mates through a computer dating service. As they await the arrival of their new dates, Robert et Robert become fast friends. Of the three favorite film subjects of writer/director Claude Lelouch--romance, crime, and politics--Robert et Robert falls firmly into the first category.
An essay on what provokes the "object woman".
Also Directed by Cédric Klapisch
A strait-laced French student moves into an apartment in Barcelona with a cast of six other characters from all over Europe. Together, they speak the international language of love and friendship.
Les mésaventures absurdes de Léopold Pavlovsky, bloqué en transit à New York.
Rémy and Mélanie are thirty years old and live in the same district in Paris. She multiplies missed appointments on social networks while he struggles to meet. Both victims of this loneliness of the big cities, at the time hyper connected where one thinks however that to meet should be simpler ... Two individuals, two courses. Without knowing it, they take two roads that will lead them in the same direction ... that of a love story?
Lepetit, an ambitious and determined man, is named the new CEO of a department store. His mission is to improve the store's financial position. He decides that the human factor will be his catchword and introduces new methods, which he also applied to himself. But tensions slowly arise between members of the staff.
Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.
Ten years after their Upper Sixth, Bruno, Momo, Leon and Alain meet together in the waiting room of a maternity hospital. The father of the awaited baby is Tomasi, their best friend at that time, who died one month before due to an overdose. They remember their teenage, their laughs, their dreams, their stupid pranks... a description of the French youth in the middle of the seventies.
An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.
"Ni Pour, Ni Contre" tracks the fall of a young TV camerawoman, Caty, after she becomes involved with a group of petty criminals and their enigmatic leader, Jean. The gang lives hand-to-mouth until the day Jean plans a daring bank robbery. Although other gang members feel out of their league, Jean persuades them to take part and Caty finds herself in a hellish world of betrayal, violence and murder.
Jean left his hometown ten years ago. When his father falls ill, he comes back and reunites with his sister Juliette and his brother Jérémie. As seasons go by around their vineyard, they'll have to trust each other again.
Also Directed by John Boorman
A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
After being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker single-mindedly tries to retrieve the rather inconsequential sum of money that was stolen from him.
An Englishman who grew up in London during World War II joins the military to fight in the Korean War.
In a twenty-year career marked by obsessive secrecy, brutality and meticulous planning, Cahill netted over £40 million. He was untouchable - until a bullet from an IRA hitman ended it all.
Patricia Arquette stars as American widow Laura Bowman, a young doctor who's unwittingly drawn into political turmoil while vacationing in Burma in the late 1980s, in this fictionalized drama based on actual events. Bowman initially left San Francisco with her sister (Frances McDormand) in an attempt to escape painful memories of her husband and son's violent deaths. But her fight to escape to Thailand could prove just as harrowing.
The story of one week in the lives of a professional football team - Swindon Town F.C.
After a chance encounter, a Dubliner (Gleeson) is stalked by a murderous facsimile of himself.
Dinah (Barbara Ferris) is a famous model and actress who is getting tired of life in the limelight and wants to take a break. While shooting a commercial spot for meat, she meets Steve (Dave Clark), a stuntman. Dinah and Steve hit it off and decide to head to an island to get away from it all (bringing along four of Steve's friends, Mike Smith, Lenny Davidson, Denis West Payton, and Rick Huxley, who -- surprise! -- play music with him). Before long, Dinah is reported missing and everyone is looking for her, making their getaway anything but tranquil.
A wealthy businessman shows his young adult kids how tough life can be.
Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.
Also Directed by Youssef Chahine
This concise masterpiece began as a commission by French TV for the news series Envoyé spécial. By filming Cairo with his unique sense of artistic digression, Chahine transformed this portrait of a city into the self-portrait of a filmmaker.
The story is set in the 12th century in Arab-ruled Spanish province Andalusia, where famed philosopher Averroes is appointed grand judge by the caliph and his liberal court judgements are not liked by everyone. The caliph's political rivals, centered around the leader of a fanatical Islamic sect, force the caliph to send Averroes into exile, but his ideas keep on living thanks to his students.
Set against the panoramic backdrop of war-torn Egypt, director Youssef Chahine tells a highly personal tale of love and determination. Amid the poverty, death and suffering caused by World War II, 18 year-old Yehia, retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of one day studying filmmaking in America, but after falling in love and discovering the lies of European occupation, Yehia profoundly reevaluates his identity and allegiances.
Adapted from Abdel Rahman Al-Sharqawi's well-known novel of the same name, this classic film by Egyptian master Youssef Chahine was eight years in the making. Chronicling a small peasant village's struggles against the careless inroads of the large local landowner, The Land shows why political oppression does not necessarily lead to a sense of solidarity among the disinherited
Egypt, 1947: in the midst of a cholera outbreak. A washerwoman tries to take care of her family, while at the same time resisting the advances of a charming suitor who's half her age.
1950 Cairo, Amin is a simple employee who lives with his family of three, his wife Zahira, son Nabil and daughter Hoda. Amin’s friend Mabrouk convinces Amin to invest his life savings in a project, which he promises, will get him rich. Amin agrees but forgets to take a receipt. Amin suddenly dies and watches on from the after life.
Hemaidah is a Farmer who hates country life. He hates working in fields and taking care of the animals in his farm. Though unsatisfied with her, he marries Zebeidah, a woman in the same village.
Directed by Youssef Chahine.
The story of a 40-year-old married woman who has fallen into idleness and does not know how to approach the revolutionary events in her country. She finds a new meaning in life when she falls in love with an aspiring young student. “I shot FAGR YOM GUEDID in 1964. I count it among my best films and still stand by it completely. It is about the class whose assets were nationalized after the 1952 revolution. I explored the question of whether this class still had a place in Egyptian society.”
(Syed) is a famous writer who climbed the top of the social and political pyramid in search of more. He is married to Sherifa, and is preparing to travel abroad to work for the United Nations, but he reads in a newspaper the news of the killing of his twin (Mahmoud), so he postpones his travel and calls the police to search for the killer of his brother, and it begins. On the search trip, the police officer has doubts about Syed.
Also Directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo
Directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo.
A king’s son takes over when his father dies.
Poverty and misery are rife in Gourga, a village in the Sahel. The inhabitants must choose: stay and await international assistance or leave for more fertile regions in the country.
Short directed by Idrissa Ouedraogo.
Karim's father is missing and presumed dead, which is why his father's brother has taken over the house and is now his stepfather: this is the custom in Burkina Faso. This would be all right with Karim, except that his new stepfather is a harsh, unloving man, who would just as soon beat him as look at him, and he is the same way with the lad's mother. At the same time, Karim has made friends with Sala, a girl from a wealthy family, starting from when he gave her a baby goat-kid. Their friendship prospers enough so that, when Karim and his mother leave the abusive uncle carrying only what they are wearing on their backs, Sala is able to persuade her family to help them settle safely elsewhere. When Karim's father turns up at last, it is icing on the cake, for they are now able to send the obnoxious man who overshadowed their lives away in disgrace.
The beautiful Awa, from a poor background, decides to marry for money rather than love and ends up with the much older Karim. While married, she continues to love the much younger Bouba. On the happy occasion of Awa’s birthday, a macabre plan is to be set in motion.
11 directors show their view on the terrorist attacks on the world trade center in New York.
A small African village. The story focuses on Bila, a ten year old boy who befriends an old woman, Sana. Everybody calls her 'Witch' but Bila himself calls her 'Yaaba' (grandmother). When Bila's cousin Nopoko gets sick it is Sana's medicine that saves her.
Set in a pre-colonial African past, Tilai is about an illicit love affair and its consequences. Saga returns to his village after an extended absence to discover that his father has taken Nogma, Saga's promised bride, for himself. Still in love with each other, the two begin an affair, although it would be considered incestuous.
Also Directed by Fernando Trueba
Present day. Chile. Legendary bank robber Vergara Grey is getting out of prison after 5 long years and is looking forward to a quiet, uneventful life together with his wife and son whom oddly he hasn't heard from in years. But soon his resolve is tested when he meets 19 year old Angel a young thief who insists the two join up to score the biggest heist of all time. Though tempted, he resists until he finds out that his beloved wife has gone off with a millionaire and his son wants to change his last name. Then Victoria, a graceful and mysteriously mute dancer living in a conservatory, steps into the picture. She captivates Vergara and Angel, as well as all others that cross her path, drastically changing their lives.
A young gallerist is in love with two sisters at the same time. In order to solve the problem he decides to invent his own twin-brother.
In 1931, a young soldier deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner due to his political ideas. Manolo has four daughters, Fernando likes all of them and they like him, so he has to decide which one to love.
Boy meets girl. Matias meets Violeta, his cousin ("prima") one morning in Madrid at the Plaza de Opera. He is twenty-five. She is 18. He's a divorced journalist trying to write a thriller. She studies violin. She's a vegetarian. He loves meat. Many things separate them, but he moves into her apartment.
Based on Esopus' fable "The lion in love".
After her experiences in Nazi Germany, actress Macarena Granada traveled to Hollywood, where she became a star. In the 1950s, the diva returns to Francoist Spain to star a Hollywood blockbuster about Queen Isabella I of Castile. (A sequel to “The Girl of Your Dreams,” 1998.)
A New York music journalist who is on a mission to investigate the disappearance of young Brazilian piano virtuoso.
Portrays the life of Héctor Abad Gómez, a prominent doctor and human rights activist in the polarized, violent Medellin of the 70s. A family man worried not only for his own children but those of the underprivileged classes as well, his home was imbued with vitality and creativity, the result of an education based on tolerance and love. Nothing could foretell that a terrible cancer would take the life of one of his beloved daughters. Driven by sadness and rage, Héctor devoted himself to the social and political causes of the time. But Medellin's intolerant society would harass him until he was finally silenced.
Also Directed by Régis Wargnier
Day-Dreams of a famous young actress during the shoot of an important scene.
Wed just as war breaks out, Jeanne hardly gets to know her military husband, Louis, before the debacle of 1940. While waiting for his return from a POW camp, Jeanne journeys through countless affairs with Louis' comrades- in-arms. Hoping to forget these wartime betrayls, Louis takes his wife and the infant twins he didn't father to Berlin, where she falls for Matthais, a sensitive German industrialist. When the Indochinese war sends Louis to Vietnam, Matthais follows Jeanne back to France. A subsequent move to Damascus where Louis is posted as military attache, fails to break their bond.
Two decades after forging an unlikely alliance in Pol Pot's Cambodia, a French ethnologist and a former Khmer Rouge official meet again after the latter is arrested for crimes against humanity.
In Paris, many citizens go to the precinct after the doors of their apartments have been sprayed with a 4 and the letters "clt". When a dweller is found mysteriously dead in his apartment, Detective Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and his partner Danglard investigate...
Simon, a famous violinist, sinks into alcoholism. He finds support from his lover, who is also the manager of the orchestra in which he plays. But is she really helping him or is she exploiting his dependence on her? A man who has been through the same experience as Simon, offers to help him...
Thomas, the son of a millionaire lives a fairly isolated existence, in a mansion in rural France. His father hires a widowed woman to take care of things while he is away. The maid's son, Charles moves in as well, and the two parents hope that the two can become friends but they become enemies immediately after meeting each other. Once their parents fall in love, Thomas decides to make Charles, who he views as an "invader", as miserable as possible.
Leila is released from prison after five years of confinement. She will meet Yannick, a young athlete who became blind after an accident. This last practice race despite his disability, but to run it must be connected by a wire to guide a person called. It offers Leila to be his guide. Through this project, they will learn to rebuild.
An epic about anthropologists who hunt and capture pygmies for study back in Europe, in an attempt to illustrate the link between man and ape.
June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.
Also Directed by Peter Greenaway
Follows Tulse Luper as he is swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments.
A short film based on the work of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.
"Antwerp" continues telling the picaresque adventures through the world of multi disciplinary artist and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. This movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival as a separate title located between the first and the second part of the Greenanway Tulse Luper Trilogy.
Peter Greenaway discussing a variety of topics, with each segment ranging in length from 6s to 2m47s.
The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. He was born in 1911 in Newport, South Wales and presumably last heard of in 1989. His life is reconstructed from the evidence of 92 suitcases found around the world - 92 being the atomic number of the element Uranium. The project includes three feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs, CD-ROMs, and books.
The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. He was born in 1911 in Newport, South Wales and presumably last heard of in 1989. His life is reconstructed from the evidence of 92 suitcases found around the world - 92 being the atomic number of the element Uranium. The project includes three feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs, CD-ROMs, and books.
Between 1795 and 1801, 306 drowned people were recovered from the Seine river, near Paris. Peter Greenaway propouns a historical approach were 25 significant cases of drownings are catalogued, dissected and elaborated, with multilayered visuals and 'documentary' asides.
The 27 year old Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi walked from Romania to Paris in 1903 and 1904 as a preparation and prelude to becoming the most important sculptor of the 20th century. Brancusi leaves his small village of Hobitza, south of the Carpathian Mountains and walks through Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and parts of France to arrive in Paris, the metropolis of world culture for the first three decades of the 1900s. He walks in spring, summer, winter and autumn, treading the landscape away from the beaten track, experiencing sights, having adventures, suffering hardships, looking, touching and feeling the world as a preparation of what is to come for him.
A short film which has its emphasis on back street walls with peeling posters and the constant pedestrian traffic in the foreground. It has a static camera positioned in front of the walls; experimental editing techniques, no dialogue-just background music, and quick edits of blackness throughout.
Peter Greenaway remembers his first meeting with Rotterdam Film Festival director Hubert Bals.
Also Directed by Francis Girod
The marriage of the famous writer Alan and his young wife Lola is in a crisis. On a vacation in Haiti Lola wants to decide if their relationship still has a future...
The plot in this story weaves around like a New Year's reveler at four in the morning, heading first in one direction and then in another, with the intention of going home if things would just stop moving. Bernard (Gerard Depardieu) is a doctor whose Hippocratic oath was a hypocritic failure -- the not-so-good doctor kills his wife because she is having an affair, and he kills her lover too. Then he joins the French Foreign Legion. On his way to the former French colonies in Africa, the plane he is in crashes, and Rossi, a "friend" on the plane with some overweight in carry-on money, shoots Bernard and takes off, leaving him for dead. He is nursed back to life and health by friendly villagers and just his luck, he not only manages to make his fortune in Africa, he also nabs a French passport from a dying man who will clearly not need it anymore unless the Pearly Gates have a French guard.
Documentary about the making of French director Claude Chabrol's first film Le Beau Serge in 1958.
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
The scene is the restless Paris of the interwar years where an attractive and ambitious woman successfully makes her way in a world previously reserved for men: that of high finance. Originating from a humble background, she quickly becomes popular with small savers by offering them outstanding interest rates. Extremely popular, she makes no secret of her taste for the good things in life and her homosexual affairs. They will cost her dearly...
Just before taking an irrevocable and tragic step, Caroline talks to Claire, her lycée friend. Later, Claire gathers five other school friends, and tells them Caroline's secret. The six agree to wage a guerrilla war against their philosophy teacher, the sarcastic and belittling M. Terrien, the cause of Caroline's despair. After seeking advice from Mayard, the school's guidance counselor and a leftist with a police record, the six look for evidence that could get Terrien fired. They strike gold, and then raise the stakes. Sarah, one of the six, hatches a deadly plan.
French drama starring Caroline Cellier, Claude Brasseur and Niels Arestrup
Claire's handbag is stolen. It contained a letter written ten years previously by the man who is now the French President. In the letter he urges his pregnant mistress to have an abortion. Claire immediately alerts the President's men. From that moment, the machinery of state swings into action.
On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more than ten years. In flashbacks, from the prison as Lacenaire writes, from Allard's study as he and Hermine read, and from other readers' memory after the book is published, we see Lacenaire's childhood as he stands up to bullies, including priests, his youthful thieving, his first murder, his brief army career, his seduction of a princess, and his affair with Avril, a young man who dies beside him.
Also Directed by Alain Corneau
In the sterile setting of a powerful multinational, two young women compete ... Isabelle is working under the orders of Christine, a woman of power she admires unreservedly.
French war ship is arriving to Polynesian shore during at 1918 - and adventures begin...
Two men break out of prison; a rival gang ambushes them. One is mortally wounded and tells the other, Mickey, to take him to the estate of a retired robber, Noel, who lives in comfort with his lovely and beloved wife, Nicole. The man dies, and Mickey, a menacing hothead, demands money of Noel. A few days later, Mickey returns to the estate, shoots up a dinner party and threatens them again. Noel sends Nicole to an hotel and goes to his old gang to help him hunt down the dangerous Mickey. Mickey has other problems, too, including heartache for a daughter he hardly knows. Young, eager cops tail Nicole, and all are on a complicated collision course.
The enigmatic but vivid imagery of this loosely plotted film is based on a similarly evocative novel by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, Noturno Indiano. An old friend of the hero's has been living in Bombay with a prostitute. His friend Peter Schlemihl (Otto Tausig) is a concentration camp survivor, who went to India after being captivated by a photograph he saw there. When the prostitute writes to him in Europe asking that he rescue his friend from a mysterious malaise, he flies into India to try and help. When he gets to Bombay, he discovers that his friend has disappeared. Following the clues left behind by the friend, and based on his acquaintance with him, he journeys to Madras to speak to a Theosophist dignitary there, and then journeys on to Portugues Goa. With each step of his journey, the hero (Jean-Hugues Anglade) becomes more identified with his friend, and re-enacts in his own person the transformations he must have experienced.
In the year 2222, a former drug dealer is kept in a state of hibernation. Reanimated, he tells his story. Leader in the narcotics market, his situation was prosperous until, during a political change, the government legalized its use.
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.
Nounours is the nickname of a "cousin" an informer with a special arrangement with the police: he gets 10% of the drugs seized thanks to his help. When his personal contact, inspector Maurin, commits suicide, inspector Gérard Delvaux takes over. Meanwhile, judge Lambert is uncovering the illegal practices of the policemen. Her persistent investigations, which had cornered Maurin, are leading to Gérard, and also to Nounours as the source of heroin that led to recent cases of deadly overdoses. Nounours promises Gérard increasingly bigger catches which he is intent on realising before he is forced to reveal who Nounours is to judge Lambert.
In this action thriller, Richard Anconina is Willie, a young and lonesome cop who loves lonesome cowboy music. While on a drug case Willie comes across a mulatta named Jo (model Ambre of Senegalese extraction), who is trapped in a dismal life of prostitution by two abusive Lebanese brothers. Risking his own life, Willie frees Jo from their fierce imprisonment, but the battered woman runs right back again.
Henri Savin has managed a trucking company for his lover, Dominique Montlaur, for many years. Now he is planning to leave her for Julie Manet, the woman he has made pregnant, and Dominique is hysterical. She first threatens suicide, then shows up at a meeting of Savin and Julie. Dominique tries everything she can think of to break Savin and Julie apart, to no avail. Frustrated in her efforts, she jumps off a cliff and dies. Savin insists that he and Julie lie to the police about the encounter, although Dominique's death was a suicide and therefore they had no direct hand in it. Detective Waldeck investigates Dominique's death.
Also Directed by Bigas Luna
Bar worker Diana Diaz (Elsa Pataky) leaves Madrid for Miami and with new boyfriend, Robert (Luis Hacha), they then head for Hollywood, prepared to do anything for fame.
Bernard and his sister Eloisa live in a ramshackle house, the rest of their ancient past and prosperity. They are waiting for their old and sick Aunt Lina to die, to inherit her vast fortune and meanwhile have a morbid existence, full of obsessions and manias.
Javier Bardem produces this documentary on the larger-than-life director Bigas Luna, compiled from over 600 hours of his personal video-diaries to reveal his most intimate side.
After a massive destruction on Earth, a white girl Alba (14) and a black boy Didac (9), are the only survivors on the Earth. They must start a new world. A Second Origin. Population is over. There are only two survivors. Now, our future depends on them.
Jose Luis is an executive at his parents underwear factory where his girlfriend Sylvia works on the shop floor. When Sylvia becomes pregnant, Jose Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. Jose Luis' mother is determined to break her son's engagement to a girl from a lower-class family, and hires Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter to seduce Sylvia.
Fifteen-year-old Lulu has never known any affection from her family. But when she goes to a rock concert with Pablo, a friend of the family, he introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later, Pablo and Lulu have married; Pablo has created a sheltered, private world for Lulu, into which nothing intrudes. However, Lulu tires of her cloistered existence, and begins hanging out in shady bars, looking for vicarious thrills and danger.
A man discovers that his girlfriend is a "stigmata" (someone whose hands and feet mysteriously bleed in the same places where Jesus Christ was crucified) and tries to keep her out of the hands of a greedy TV preacher who plans to exploit her to make money for himself.
On a beach in Barcelona appears the body of a young man, his face eaten by fish, who has tattooed on his arm the phrase: "I was born to revolutionize the hell." So begins a strange enigma. To begin we must find a name to this dead, find their identity. This is the charge receiving Pepe Carvalho detective Galician, former CIA agent and vocational skeptical, which does not prevent you from enjoying and savoring the pleasures of good food and good bed. Among the Barcelona underworld and the streets and canals of Amsterdam, Carvalho soon gives the answer.
A child does not stand the idea of having a new brother and dreams about drinking milk from the breasts of his mother again. The child asks the moon to bring him a tit only for him.
Also Directed by Patrice Leconte
Probably no one in the public listening to the orchestra's rendition of Ravel's Bolero notices him but the drummer is a regular hero. For, although his mind is assailed by loads of unsettling thoughts and worries, he tries to keep the rhythm at any cost. He knows all too well that he falls out of time only once all the magic of the piece will vanish.
Three aging and failed comedians, Georges Cox, Victor Vialat and Eddie Carpentier, hit the road again with a lousy production of a lousy play, of course under the worst possible conditions.
Alice Tomaso gets out of jail, and goes looking for Léo and Julien, one of whom, it appears, is her father. On the way, she steals the wrong car - one belonging to the Russian mafia, and arrives at her destination with a gang of thugs out looking for her and the car.
Holidaymakers arriving in a Club Med camp on the Ivory Coast are determined to forget their everyday problems and emotional disappointments. Games, competitions, outings, bathing and sunburn accompany a continual succession of casual affairs.
A collection of short films by 16 European directors.
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard.
Also Directed by Ismail Merchant
In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.
Adrienne Mark (Jeanne Moreau) is the most acclaimed French novelist of her generation, whose best known work, Je M'Appelle France, was an international best-seller made into an award-winning French film (and a disastrous Americanized remake). Adrienne is living in New York City when she learns that the flat in Paris where she grew up (as Adrienne Markowsky) is up for sale. Looking for a key to her past, she buys the apartment and discovers a cache of letters written by her late mother. Adrienne's mother died in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, but while she's been led to believe that her mother was betrayed while working with the resistance, the letters suggest that the truth was far more troubling. Along the way, Adrienne is romantically pursued by a young fan, William O'Hara (Josh Hamilton), though he instead finds love with Virginia Kelly (Sean Young), an American film producer eager to work with the great writer.
Ismail Merchant's feature directorial debut addresses a subject close to his heart: the expressive Urdu language of Northern India, in danger of extinction as political trends and modernization obscure its contributions to Indian culture. Merchant 's treatment is wry and good humored , as his characters - an aging Urdu poet (Shashi Kapoor) and a worshipful young college lecturer - clash despite their shared passion for the beauty of words.
Circa 1940 in Trinidad, still a British Colony, lives Ganesh Ramseyor, of East Indian origin, along with his wife, Leela. He longs to reach out to people, especially to Hindus, in order to promote the Hindu Faith, and be known as a writer. He does get considerable success, so much so that he becomes famous as a miracle worker, having cured a man of sharing intimacy with his bicycle; prevented a man from believing that he can fly; and convincing a young woman to end her fast. His fame spreads all over the island and thousands throng to seek his blessings, which he does dole out quite benevolently, without charging any fees from the poor and the needy. He then decides to spread his wings by challenging the local politician Pandit Narayan Chandrashekhar alias Cyrus T., and takes over The Hindu Organization, thence opening his way to a seat in the prestigious Member of the Legislative Assembly
A British family is trapped between culture, tradition, and the colonial sins of the past.
In the time frame of a single day (from dawn to dust), the film records the wanderings of an Indian youth who sleeps on the beach, holds conversations with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, and scavenges for food with his monkey. By afternoon, a little ceremony is held by well-to-do Gandhi-ites, at which a speaker delivers a sermon on "godly love"; but when the boy comes too close, he is told to move on by a guard, one of a series of exclusions of this onlooker-outcast.
Also Directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms
No overview found.
Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.
West Berlin, 1974. The revolution didn't happen like it was supposed. Grischa, a 30-year-old actress dissatisfied with standard left-wing politics, interviews working women to find out how they deal with being both mothers and members of society.
Emily, a child, stays with her bourgeois grandparents during frequent periods when her mother makes films. Isabelle wraps a picture, flies to her childhood home to pick up Emily, and plans to leave for her place in France. Old wounds between Isabelle and her parents open around Isabelle's life style. It's also apparent that Isabelle's mother, Paula, is unhappy - with her husband and with her youthful hopes dashed when she became pregnant with Isabelle. Unbeknownst to Isabelle, the co-star of the film she's just made has followed her, checked into a nearby hotel, and wants to begin an affair, even though he's married. Can Isabelle sort it out? What's best for Emily?
The story of the unhappy life of the romantic poet Henrich von Kleist (1777-1811). His last letter to the Prussian State Minister is not dealt with until after his death, he lead his fight against Napolean in written form, his relationships to men are by far more passionate that with women, his engagement was a disaster... (www.german-films.de)
A TV movie in episodes by a group of female filmmakers.
Doctors say that Veronika, a woman in her 20s, is schizophrenic. She is compliant, which makes her an easy target for men. She's religious, believing she is God's favorite child; she searches for Jesus. She has sent a letter to a filmmaker suggesting her life as the subject for a movie. We see her raped than take up with a series of men she believes are Jesus, each willing or insistent on sex. A young man with his own crisis of faith invites her to join a cult. We see her involuntarily committed to an asylum from time to time where medication and constraints await. Her wealthy parents are helpless. Will a medical professional ever talk to her? If one did, would it help?
Documentary about the everyday routine of the sales assistant Angelika Urban.
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgortzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgortzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter. Malgortzata is excited about her recent trip to Africa and shows Paul her photos; Paul is upset because she says there is no way she will move to Paris, Warsaw is the only place she wants to be. The two talk, disagree, argue, make-up, and talk again -- but will all this discussion ever resolve a matter of the heart and not the mind? tt0091379
TV movie by Helma Sanders-Brahms.
Also Directed by Raymond Depardon
On the 8th floor of the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Raymond Depardon's film features a minute of silence with eight artists and scientists: David Lynch, Patti Smith, William Eggleston, Takeshi Kitano, Ron Mueck, Jean Michel Alberola, Agnès Varda and Misha Gromov.
This documentary is a collection of footage of 14 suspects being 'interviewed' by the deputy public prosecutors.
Documentary Short
The proceedings of a Paris courtroom are the grist for this documentary. Drawn from over 200 appearances before the same female judge, the director chooses a dozen or so varied misdemeanor and civil hearings to highlight the subtle details of human behavior. In the process he draws attention to issues of guilt, innocence, policing and ethnicity in France.
Raymond Depardon sets out to meet French people to listen to them tell their tales. From Charleville-Mézières to Nice, Sète to Cherbourg, he invites people encountered in the street to continue their conversation in front of Depardon's camera and us, unfettered from any constraints.
The film allows mathematicians involved in the creation of the exhibition to express themselves in their own words and includes Sir Michael Atiyah, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Carolina Canales González and Giancarlo Lucchini, Alain Connes, Nicole El Karoui, Misha Gromov, Cédric Villani and Don Zagier.
A new documentary by filmmaker-photographer Raymond Depardon – where justice and psychiatry meet.
The first of a documentary serie about rural France
Also Directed by Hugh Hudson
The story of nine-year old Maria and her father Marcelino who, in 1879, found the first pre-historic cave paintings at the now world famous Altamira cave.
A shipping disaster in the 19th Century has stranded a man and woman in the wilds of Africa. The lady is pregnant, and gives birth to a son in their tree house. Soon after, a family of apes stumble across the house and in the ensuing panic, both parents are killed. A female ape takes the tiny boy as a replacement for her own dead infant, and raises him as her son. Twenty years later, Captain Phillippe D'Arnot discovers the man who thinks he is an ape. Evidence in the tree house leads him to believe that he is the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, and thus takes it upon himself to return the man to civilization.
New York trapper Tom Dobb becomes an unwilling participant in the American Revolution after his son Ned is drafted into the Army by the villainous Sergeant Major Peasy. Tom attempts to find his son, and eventually becomes convinced that he must take a stand and fight for the freedom of the Colonies, alongside the aristocratic rebel Daisy McConnahay. As Tom undergoes his change of heart, the events of the war unfold in large-scale grandeur.
Rich L.A. party brat Tim spins into a cycle of despair after his parents divorce, and trying to fill the void with drugs and trouble only buys him a ticket to an asylum. But with the help of a psychiatrist who has taken an interest in him, will Tim try to pull himself out of the muck of teenage rebellion and ennui?
Maryam d'Abo suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2007 and is lucky to be alive. Her experience inspired this film, made by her film director husband (Chariots of Fire, Greystoke, The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and Revolution). It leads the viewer on a personal journey of recovery, giving a sense of hope to those who are isolated by their condition, one that is not seen and therefore often misunderstood. At times both traumatic and uplifting, this is an intelligent and informative documentary.
The American Revolution is more than the war of Washington and Jefferson, great issues and radical thought. Its also a struggle of ordinary people, unlettered in combat, politics and government. Al Pacino stars as a rough-hewn trapper drawn into the conflict in this compelling adventure framed by the violent summer of 1776 and the bloody victory of Yorktown in 1781. This is the director's "reimagined new version" of his 1985 film, which is 10 minutes shorter than the original, among other changes.
Memoir of the lives of a family growing up on a post World War I British estate headed up by a strong disciplinarian, her daughter, her inventor husband, their ten year old son, and his older sister. Through the household comes a number of suitors hoping to impress the young woman, including an aviator. When the elder woman's son shows up at the estate with his French fiancé, everything gets thrown into turmoil. The young boy takes a sudden interest in her sexual allure and his father is disturbed by his own non-Victorian feelings.
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
A collection of European T.V. commercials directed by a variety of well-known directors from across Europe and the U.S. Compiled and produced by Jean-Marie Boursicot.
Also Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky
A pretty, young girl from a coal-mining town comes to Moscow with dreams of becoming a supermodel in this satirical look at the fashion industry.
The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash are narcotics detectives who, while both being extremely successful, can't stand each other. Crime Lord Yves Perret, furious at the loss of income that Tango and Cash have caused him, frames the two for murder. Caught with the murder weapon on the scene of the crime, the two have no alibi. Thrown into prison with most of the criminals they helped convict, it appears that they are going to have to trust each other if they are to clear their names and catch the evil Perret.
A retarded man get help from a sociopathic woman when tries to reunite with his dying father, who years earlier disowned him.
The evolution of a nation during six decades of turbulent history is dramatized via two families from opposing classes.
Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain. When the school is burned down, the majestic poplar trees that are a source of local pride are cut down to rebuild the new structure.
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya surely has the greatest claim as the best screen adaptation of a Chekhov play. Featuring brooding and articulate performances, especially from Sergei Bondarchuk as Doctor Astrov and gorgeous cinematography that shifts from sepia to autumnal colours, the film has an elegaic and bittersweet atmosphere. The setting is a crumbling country estate which supports the chic urban lifestyle of the elderly Professor Serebryakov who visits with his young and glamorous new wife, Elena.
Andrey Konchalovsky's project "the Burden of power" is about unpopular decisions of heads of state and political figures in power. The heroes of the cycle "Burden of power" can not be called fighters for liberal ideas, but they paradoxically had a huge impact on the fate and development of their countries. The film about Heydar Aliyev is part of Andrey Konchalovsky's cycle "the Burden of power" about the great politicians of the twentieth century. This cycle began with a film about Yuri Andropov. It was Andropov who promoted Heydar Aliyev as a politician, because he saw him as a close associate in the upcoming reform of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the story followed a different scenario: the USSR collapsed, and Heydar Aliyev was thrown out of politics. But he managed to return to it as a winner, overcome the turmoil, become the President of Azerbaijan, and give his people confident guidelines for moving into the future.
The boy wants to have a pigeon, but he can't afford to buy a bird. On the market for a pigeon asking for 100 rubles! Then he decides to buy a bird, bartering it for his father's album with stamps. Having caught a pigeon, the boy releases a bird into the sky. But the pigeon is returning to it's native dovecote, to it's former owner, who again demands money for it. This is a short movie about childhood and dreams, about the first life lessons that everyone has to face in childhood, when society and its laws bring changes into life, sometimes breaking the brightest dreams.
Also Directed by Gabriel Axel
A Danish movie about the life of Flemming and his best friend Kvik.
Oskar? That's my driver. And Tina, my maid, must have taken my suitcase with her to the baron - the one my daughter should have been engaged to. But now she is having a child with Oskar. And one of my people has stolen more than 300,000 DKR from me, because he wants to marry my daughter, who is not my daughter. And now the has girl run off with all of my jewels ..
Nikolaj Christensen is a popular Danish folk-rock artist. In this teen-oriented film, Christian (Christensen) is a young man in search of love, who restlessly leaves his home in Denmark to search for it all over Europe, finally finding some semblance of it in Morocco. This slight film is directed by Gabriel Axel, who also directed Babette's Feast. It is likeliest to be of interest to fans of the star and his music, which is used throughout.
A young Danish guy, Nils, is visiting Morocco, where he meets the 16-year-old Berber girl Leïla. It marks the beginning of a great, all-encompassing passion. Leïla must defy her family to be with Nils, and their love has big consequences.
A French housekeeper with a mysterious past brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late 19th century Denmark.
Factory worker Otto Nielsen and his wife Helga live in a 2-room apartment in a sad Copenhagen suburbs district, where the S-trains still bumble by, but of course, such things can be used to. They have five children and it is often difficult to meet daily expenses. Nielsen has bought a building site outside the city, it is his dream to once again be able to exchange the narrow apartment with his own house.
This three-part movie begins with a young woman married to an older, cold-hearted man in the year 1200. Two rivals have a swordfight over the affections of the woman. Part two takes place in 1910 and finds an amorously unfaithful wife taking on her many lovers while her unsuspecting husband lurks nearby. The final part finds a count and countess engaging in extramarital affairs in France during the 1840s.
On the idyllic Birkø lives Christian a parish executive officer. He is a brave and honest man, happily married to Martha, and this couple has a son called Theo and he will once take over the farm.
Also Directed by Jacques Rivette
Vittorio stops to help Kate when her car breaks down on a mountain road. When they meet again, Vittorio discovers that Kate has rejoined a circus after a long time away. He begins to learn about the troupe's buried past and Kate's connection to it, while experiencing the magic of the circus.
The second film covers Joan's trial and the end of her life.
Marie, is just out from prison when she runs into Baptiste a young paranoid needing companionship. In their pursuit of a mysterious briefcase carried by Marie's former lover, they roam the street of Paris, transformed into a giant board game, a maze spotted with mysterious traps, puzzling clues, and chance encounters. Maybe they are bricks in some sinister scheme, maybe they are playing a board game, maybe it's a fairy tale, maybe it's yet something else...
The Daughter of the Moon battles the Daughter of the Sun over a magical diamond that will allow the winner to remain on Earth, specifically in modern day Paris.
Two actresses fall prey to the supernatural manipulations of a nightclub magician.
A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.
In the third part of a Cinéastes triptych on Jean Renoir, the director sits alone in a cinema analyzing scenes from La Marseillaise and The Rules of the Game, and discussing his editing and storytelling techniques.
Quick-witted, well-read cultured types revolve around each other in a delightful potpourri of theatre, romanticism and theft.
The film follows the story of three girls in contemporary Paris. One searches for her lost mother since she knows she's adopted. The other has come out of a coma and needs to have a love relationship aside from his mysterious father. The third one is a crook who redeems herself through love. The action is commented by songs and dance routines.
Also Directed by Merzak Allouache
Set in the northern Algerian port city of Mostaganem. The title refers to the hordes of refugees, the 'Harragas', who smuggle themselves out of the country via any means possible. Here we meet one such group, Rachid, Nasser and Imene who pay a smuggler, Hassan, to take them to Spain in his rickety boat. Along with a group of African and Arab migrants, they are risking all they have to cross the stormy Straits.
Omar, an unstable and lonely teenager, lives in a slum in the suburbs of Mostaganem, Algeria. He is addicted to a famous psychotropic, nicknamed “Madame Courage”: Artane tablets, very popular among young Algerians, for their euphoric effect of invincibility. Omar is an expert thief. One morning, he goes downtown to commit his usual crimes. His first prey is a young girl called Selma, walking with her friends, prominently wearing a gold necklace. As he commits his larceny, their eyes meet.
Kamel et son frère Bouzid vivent à Bab el Oued, un quartier populaire d'Alger. Kamel est un solitaire, désabusé et taciturne. Bouzid, plus jovial, est un mordu d'internet. Il passe son temps dans un cybercafé à chater avec des filles du monde entier. Sans vraiment y croire, il les invite à Alger. Mais un jour, Laurence, une de ses correspondantes françaises, lui annonce qu'elle accepte son invitation...
The comedy in this lively film barely conceals its darker, more serious undertones as it chronicles a young Algerian's eye-opening introduction to the joys and travails of being an immigrant in Paris. Alilo has left his home to pick up an important suitcase for his employer. Unfortunately, he has lost the Parisian address. Fortunately, his cousin Mok, emigrated there several years before with his middle-class family before and is able to act as a guide. Mok, an aspiring rap singer, comes from a middle-class family, but chooses to live on his own in the dilapidated deteriorating 18th district, known as 'Moskova.' Mok characterizes the place as a haven for artists and intellectuals, but it is plainly just a Third World slum filled with tightly knit and colorful neighbors. Mok and Alilo have many interesting, some tragedy-tinged adventures over the five days it takes them to find the suitcase.
A watershed film, Omar Gatlato held a mirror up to Algerian male culture and the mirror cracked. The title refers to the expression "gatlato al-rujula," or, roughly, "machismo killed him" and the film's mordant insights into male posturing and alienation in Algerian society animate this bit of folk wisdom. In mock documentary style, a young man recounts with wry commentary a typical day in his life in the Bab el-Oued quarter of Algiers, while the camera playfully shows a different story. In following Omar and his friends in their pursuit of happiness, the film examines with shrewd humor the gang values of urban youth; their passion for popular culture (soccer, "Hindoo" movies, Rai concerts), their hidden fear of women, and their social insecurity in an environment where they are marginalized.
Mr. Rachid, librarian, shocked and disappointed by his recent transfer, talks about the day and the night that preceded the tragic death of one of his colleagues.
Directed by Merzak Allouache.
A sprawling, masterful depiction of a day in the life of Algiers by arguably Algeria’s greatest living filmmaker, Merzak Allouache.
Young Algerian journalist Nedjma is investigating Islamic accounts of paradise. She is particularly interested in the descriptions used by Salafi preachers to recruit young Algerian men as jihadists. She and her colleague Mustapha find a number of disturbing, richly embellished video sermons and decide to explore the phenomenon in more detail.
Also Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Two drifters bum around, visit earthy women and discuss opening a car wash in Pittsburgh.
A New York journalist lies when his fake story about a pimp describes a real pimp up for murder.
Respected liberal Senator Joe Tynan is asked to to lead the opposition to a Supreme Court appointment. It means losing an old friend and fudging principles to make the necessary deals, as well as further straining his already part-time family life. But it could be a big boost to his career, so he takes it on. Helping him prepare the case is pretty southern researcher Karen Traynor, and their developing relationship further complicates and compromises his life.
Buck Bonham is a country singer on the road caught in a romantic triangle with Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving, the daughter of one of his longtime musical sidekick.
A workaholic father becomes sole parent to his 2 young sons, and finds it hard to relate to them, consumed as he is with his own grief.
A stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.
The 16 years old amateur photographer Charles accidentally takes a photo of Laura - and falls in love with her, when he develops the picture. He finds out that she works as singer in a bar, but is about to be thrown out. Although rejected at first by the 23 years old, he wants to help her and starts an ad campaign behind her back... with unexpected results.
A young woman with a long rap sheet who steals cars for a living is befriended by a public defender who tries to steer her straight. But her goal is to steal and subsequently sell enough cars (sometimes the same car more than once) to buy a new Ferrari.
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as antisemitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises.
Andy Garcia plays Clinton, who is eager to find his brother's murderer. To do so, he enlists the aid of Nadine, an expensive call girl. Clinton and Nadine get sucked into a plot to smuggle guns to the Contra forces in Nicaragua.
Also Directed by Vicente Aranda
Set in '50s Spain, a young man leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée can get married. He rents a room from a widow, and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.
A multi-part feature on the governing body of Spain, the Popular Party under Jose María Aznar. Themes include the bombing of Iraq, immigration, U.S. fire in Baghdad, and the manipulation of the media.
In director Vicente Aranda's adaptation of the classic opera, a French writer documents the seductive power of the beautiful Gypsy Carmen, who turns her charms on a young soldier, awakening his passions but ultimately leading to tragedy. Jose becomes obsessed with Carmen and finds himself unable to control his jealousy, which forces him to make a deadly decision in this fiery story of love and betrayal.
A young woman’s passion forms the basis of this erotic Spanish drama adapted from a popular novel by Antonio Gala. The night before Desideria’s marriage, her girl friends give her some valuable advice on sex. The marriage takes place, and while it is generally happy, her husband Ramiro suffers from sexual dysfunction and Desideria is frustrated. The two end up on holiday in Istanbul with two friends. Desideria falls madly in love with the sensual ambiance of the ancient, teeming city. She begins a passionate affair with a handsome Turkish guide, Yaman. Upon her return home, she learns that she is pregnant. Ramiro agrees to support the child, but unfortunately it dies in infancy and the grieving Desideria flees for Istanbul to find her lover. She finds him and they renew their torrid affair. Later she learns some distressing things about Yaman, but this does not stop her from becoming his sexual slave and a call girl for wealthy carpet sellers.
The plot follows a private detective, an ex communist and former CIA agent, who travels from Barcelona to Madrid to discover the identity of the assassin of the leader of the Spanish Communist party who was stabbed during a blackout while presiding over a meeting of the party's central committee. The film is a thriller with ironic political overtones.
This is the story of a man fighting with all his might for his life and his freedom. Eleuterio (”El Lute”) embarks upon an action-packed future, fuelled by the notions of freedom and dreams of living just as his countrymen, ever-growing in his mind. Nothing and no-one can stop him. After escaping the Puerto de Santa María prison, the reunion with his family is just the beginning of what will become an endless escape.
The plot follows the story of twin brothers, one is a coldhearted violent police officer, the other is a helpless romantic with a mental disability. The two brothers are tragically involved with a prostitute who works in the bordello that gives the film its title. The film was adapted from an eponymous novel written by Juan Marsé.
Joan Mares obsession for the lovely and luscious Norma Valenti takes epic proportions because he cannot let go of her. After he is injured by some skin heads, he uses his scars to pursue his life as a street musician. He devices a plan to get to Norma and she never catches on to his deceit, except she realizes that as Juan Faneca his performance in bed is exactly what she had experienced with Joan Mares because she concludes they were taught sex by the same prostitute.
In childhood and youth, the three were "the inseparables." Luisa married Ángel, then two years later, she left him to marry Ramiro. After ten years, Ángel reappears, back from South America, broke and ill. Luisa is overcome with sentimentality and, over Ramiro's objections, takes Ángel into their house. Ángel is bitter, he and Ramiro have shifted from best friends to enemies. Luisa wants to be in love with both. Ramiro hopes he can wait out Ángel's declining health, and Luisa wants to heal Ángel through force of will. What is Ángel's plan? Observing the roiling emotions are Luisa and Ramiro's precocious young children. Who's in danger here?
In the post Spanish civil war years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell stories, known as "aventis" (the film's original title in Catalan, its original language). These tales mix war stories, local gossip, comic book characters, fantasy and real events. The "aventis" told in this film are told in flashback. In the mid 80s, 45 or so years after the age of the "aventis," a doctor and a nurse-nun (who grew up together, and now are co-workers in a hospital) identify the corpse of one of the main characters of the "aventis" of their childhood and adolescence. Besides the interesting flashbacks - a chronical of the Civil War in a "typical" Barcelona microcosm itself, the discovery of this body (belonging to someone long presumed dead) leads to other surprises and unresolved doubts, several decades later
Also Directed by Jaco Van Dormael
Finger ballet telling the story of romance on a table-sized stage.
A storm is on the horizon. When a jet-black cloud engulfs a small village, the residents discover that it could put an end to more than just blue skies.
Theatre film based on the debut novel of french writer Gustave Flaubert. Performances by Maaike Neuville and Koen De Sutter at KVS, Brussels.
Nemo Nobody leads an ordinary existence with his wife and 3 children; one day, he wakes up as a mortal centenarian in the year 2092.
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred's good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can't help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred's, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.
Adaptation of a musical play by Eva Bal set in Ghent.
God lives in Brussels. On earth though, God is a coward, with pathetical morals and being odious with his family. His daughter, Ea, is bored at home and can't stand being locked up in a small apartment in ordinary Brussels, until the day she decides to revolt against her dad...
Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.
È pericoloso sporgersi tells the story of a child who has been thrust into a position where he must make an impossible decision.
Also Directed by Yoshishige Yoshida
An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.
A freestyle biopic of Ikki Kita, the ultranationalist intellectual whose ideas inspired the failed military coup in 1936.
An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death.
Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.
Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film is a haunting tale of unrequited love and postwar disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong woman is conventional, but its enactment is radically new.
A spontaneous romance blooms between Kawamura, a professor touring Europe, and Naoko, a married woman living in Paris, scarred by the Nagasaki atomic bombings. The two protagonists travel around Europe trying to find themselves.
Yoshida grew close to Ozu Yasujiro during his time at Shochiku, where he was able to observe the legendary master at work. Although Yoshida and his generation outspokenly rejected the values of Ozu, Kurosawa and the older humanist filmmakers, over the years Yoshida found himself increasingly drawn back to Ozu’s films, fascinated by their unique rigor, formal language and delicate balance between comedy and tragedy. For Japanese television, Yoshida adapted his own text into a four part documentary, which he also condensed into the one hour version.
A Documentary on the Japanese baseball player Sadaharu Oh
A married woman lets her lover take naked pictures of her. The photos end up in possession of a man who starts blackmailing the couple.
In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.
Also Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
A train travels across Italy toward Rome. On board is a professor who daydreams a conversation with a love that never was, a family of Albanian refugees who switch trains and steal a ticket, three brash Scottish soccer fans en route to a match, and a complaining widow traveling to a memorial service for her late husband who's accompanied by a community-service volunteer who's assisting her. Interactions among these Europeans turn on class and nationalism, courtesy and rudeness, and opportunities for kindness.
We can see rocks on a sea shore, with cavities, in one of them, the highest, there are 3 seagull eggs, and the waves slam that rock.
Abbas Kiarostami shoots a documentary about the AIDS crisis in Uganda.
A hundred and fourteen famous Iranian theater and cinema actresses and a French star: mute spectators at a theatrical representation of Khosrow and Shirin, a Persian poem from the twelfth century, put on stage by Kiarostami. The development of the text -- long a favorite in Persia and the Middle East -- remains invisible to the viewer of the film, the whole story is told by the faces of the women watching the show.
Persian Carpet is an omnibus film produced by Iran's National Carpet Center and Farabi Cinema Foundation where 15 renowned Iranian directors contributed films on the subject of Persian carpet. Carpets are the reflection of the cultural and historical identity of Iran.
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
After the earthquake of Guilan, the film director and his son, Puya, travel to the devastated area to search for the actors of the movie the director made there a few years ago, "Where Is My Friend's House?" (1987). In their search, they found how people who had lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Plot unknown.
Also Directed by Lucian Pintilie
The level of disinterest in personal affairs has become so cynical in Bucharest that people cheer even an inept army and police manhunt. Meanwhile, Mitu and Elena get to know each other in the course of a vodka drinking contest and discover that they are both dissatisfied with the status quo. Mitu is about to begin military service and Elena is to be married to a man she does not love. They decide they are meant for each other and plan on a different future, one that is on a collision course with the authorities, and start a mad affair.
A study of the mental breakdown of a doctor in a remote rural village. He believes himself intellectually superior to everyone except for a political prisoner in a mental ward. This is a metaphor on life under repressive governments, conformity versus individual expression.
A description of Romania before Ceausescu's downfall, through the story of Nela. Daughter of a former colonel of the Securitate, the romanian political police. She refused to become as her sister, an agent of this Securitate, and lives with her father. After he died, she leaves Bucarest, and ends up in a little town, where she meets Mitica, a surgeon, another herself, laughing of everything.
In this very black comedy about ill-suited neighbors united by marriage, Niki is a former colonel in the Romanian army whose daughter is married to the son of Flo, an aging Bohemian who is full of schemes for the “new” Romania. As the young couple prepares to emigrate to the U.S., Niki is obliged to interact with Flo, whom he finds totally unbearable.
A prosecutor, policemen and teacher bring the students Vuica and Nicu to a restaurant to re-enact their drunken brawl there, and have it filmed to show the effects of alcoholism.
An inexperienced prosecutor becomes involved with a local woman while investigating a miner's death.
Frant Tandara, former torturer in Romanian communist prisons, is ready to confess his crimes to a journalist and a former victim. The two meet him at the train station in Giurgiu, where Tandara, a man with a shy demeanor, welcomes them by offering them flowers. But the confession presents problems right from the start: the tape recorder does not work, Tandara talks too fast or too slow. Frant tries to begin the tale by talking about the least significant parts of his life: his father in the military, his education, his wandering at the end of the war. The journalist tries to get him with direct questions about his career as a butcher but only gets evasive answers. Tandara's wife intervenes to ask them to stop torturing her husband, and the afternoon does not go as expected. This is a film about people's failure to let memory do its job.
Based on a theatrical text by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), who was a bitter and funny witness of the turn-of-the-20th-century Romanian bourgeois mores, Carnival Scenes manages to preserve and further enhance the slightly hysteric atmosphere of his plays. Pintilie creates a strange combination of carnival scenes which is brought to the screen as a burlesque, fast-paced, screwball comedy with a meditative undertone. This film was banned in Romania for a decade until the death of Ceausescu in 1989 and was only released after the 1989 revolution.
In 1925 Romania, young Marie-Therese Von Debretsy refuses the flirtatious advances of her husband's commanding officer. As a result, the cosmopolitan family is reassigned to a brutally bleak and dangerous outpost on the Bulgarian/Romanian frontier where both their relationship and humanity are severely tested.
Also Directed by Gaston Kaboré
In pre-colonial times a peddler crossing the savanna discovers a child lying unconscious in the bush. When the boy comes to, he is mute and cannot explain who he is. The peddler leaves him with a family in the nearest village. After a search for his parents, the family adopts him, giving him the name Wend Kuuni (God's Gift) and a loving sister with whom he bonds. Wend Kuuni regains his speech only after witnessing a tragic event that prompts him to reveal his own painful history.
In the Mossi culture, one of the rites attending the birth of a child and its induction as a new member of the community involves the burial of the placenta. The space in which the placenta is buried is called 'Zan Boko' - a phrase which connotes the religious, cultural and affective relations that bind the child to the land and that embraces the notions of 'rootedness' and 'belonging'. Kaboré tells the story of Tinga, who resists the encroaching urbanization of his native territory. The specific rhythms and vision of the rural community, including its values, social relationship, and individual & collective destinies, are altered when a city is planted on the edge of an ancient native village.
In an early 19th century African village, Wend Kuuni - a young man, lives with his adopted family after his mother was killed as a witch. When Pughneere - his adopted sister - becomes ill, the villagers suspect Wend Kuuni. In order to save Pughneere's life (and his own) he must set out on a journey to find a healer. His quest brings him in contact with people around him and is a journey of self-discovery.
A blacksmith falls off his bicycle when he tries to avoid a tortoise which crosses his path. He brings the animal home to his twelve year old son, Rabi, who becomes so fascinated that he forgets his chores at this father's shop. When the angry smith removes the tortoise, Rabi's grandfather, Pusga, helps Rabi find a larger one to consol the boy. Rabi wants to tame the animal and this new obsession leads him to defy parental authority. Pusga gently opens the boy's eyes to the visible and invisible ways of nature. Rabi starts to understand liberty, responsibility and respect for life. In turn he awakens long buried sentiments in the grandfather.
Also Directed by Nadine Trintignant
Catherine and Marcello are secluded in their house, living under the candlelight. Unable to accept the injustice behind the loss of their nine-month-old baby, they face a slow but definite self-destruction.
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
A man witnesses a suicide and starts imagining that it was a murder committed by himself.
Paul and Sarah are married and have two children. He is a press photographer in a newspaper that rather seeks sensational business. She does not work and it weighs on her, especially since Paul is often called to move, leaving her alone. To make a "scoop", Paul courted Solange, the daughter of a minister who had an accident. One day, Sarah sees them in the street. Jealous and annoyed, she tries to get closer to Paul ...
August 1939. The fate of four young people, Ramona, Georges, Brigitte and Hans is upset by the outbreak of war.
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Also Directed by Sarah Moon
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
A story about a father who kidnaps his daughter and which the director describes as a love story that ended badly.
Documentary about photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, including footage of him in his Paris and Provence homes and many stills of his works. He talks about his passion for drawing, offers his opinion on different types of photography and shares photos of himself.
A retelling of Bluebeard by renowned photographer Sarah Moon