Venice 70: Future Reloaded
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.
Isabel Coixet
Paul Schrader
Kim Ki-duk
Bernardo Bertolucci
Catherine Breillat
James Franco
Walter Salles
Claire Denis
Amos Gitai
Monte Hellman
Zhangke Jia
Michele Placido
Ermanno Olmi
Salvatore Mereu
Shekhar Kapur
Ulrich Seidl
Karim Aïnouz
Atom Egoyan
Pablo Trapero
Brillante Mendoza
Peter Chan
Shinya Tsukamoto
Todd Solondz
Sion Sono
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
João Pedro Rodrigues
Haile Gerima
Alexey German Jr.
Amir Naderi
Tariq Teguia
Edgar Reitz
Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Yonfan
Samuel Maoz
Abbas Kiarostami
Davide Ferrario
Yorgos Lanthimos
Giuseppe Piccioni
Semih Kaplanoğlu
Tobias Lindholm
Aleksey Fedorchenko
Shirin Neshat
Júlio Bressane
Pietro Marcello
Hong Sang-soo
Frédéric Fonteyne
Pablo Larraín
Antonio Capuano
Benoît Jacquot
Franco Maresco
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Marlen Khutsiyev
Jan Cvitkovič
Teresa Villaverde
Krzysztof Zanussi
Tusi Tamasese
Wang Bing
Jean-Marie Straub
Celina Murga
Lluís Galter
Nicolás Pereda
John Akomfrah
Lav Diaz
Rama Burshtein
Hala Alabdalla
Jazmín López
Franco Piavoli
Amit Dutta
Andrew Wonder
Milcho Manchevski
Guido Lombardi
Luca Severi
Also Directed by Isabel Coixet
Documentary made for the exhibition that the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Quiang made in the Prado Museum. The film reveals all the secrets of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, one of the great international contemporary artists, famous for his original explosion technique in his drawings thanks to the properties of gunpowder.
Ellesmere Island, northern Canada, 1908. Josephine, a brave but naive woman, embarks on a dangerous journey through inhospitable regions in search of her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, who tries to find a route to the North Pole.
As her marriage dissolves, a Manhattan writer takes driving lessons from a Sikh instructor with marriage troubles of his own. In each other's company they find the courage to get back on the road and the strength to take the wheel.
A fish-market employee doubles as a contract killer.
Set in an small English town in 1959, the story of a woman who decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield.
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.
A touching story of a deaf girl who is sent to an oil rig to take care of a man who has been blinded in a terrible accident. The girl has a special ability to communicate with the men on board and especially with her patient as they share intimate moments together that will change their lives forever.
How will a top cardiologist mend her broken heart in the wake of a failed relationship? She is clear about her symptoms: first, pain in the sternum and then an obsession that hijacks her brain as she goes over and over her most recent dates. Once she has made the diagnosis, will she believe in her speedy recovery? Perhaps the energy efficiency manager who works in her hospital will be able to revive her broken heart.
Also Directed by Paul Schrader
A hotel cabana boy falls for the wife of a powerful politico. But when she confesses to the affair, her husband determines to end it forever.
Haunted by terrible acts the Nazis forced him to participate in, the disenchanted Father Lankester Merrin focuses his energies on helping with an archaeological dig in the northern part of Kenya. There, the crew uncovers a church that predates Christian missions into the area, but the discovery also causes strange events to start occurring -- including physical changes to a young, disabled boy, whom Merrin grows to suspect has been possessed by a demon.
A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima told in four parts. The first three parts relate events in three of his novels: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kyoko's House, and Runaway Horses. The last part depicts the events of 25th November 1970.
Fox and Jett play a brother and sister who are lead performers in a rock band, The Barbusters, in Cleveland, Ohio. The sister, Patti Rasnick, is an unmarried mother and has a troubled relationship with her own mother, who is deeply religious. Estranged from her parents and struggling to make ends meet, Patti decides to dive headlong into a carefree rock music lifestyle. The brother, Joe Rasnick, pulls away from rock music to provide some stability for his young nephew. It takes a family crisis to bring Patti back home and force her to face the prickly past with her mother.
A meticulous horticulturist who is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager. When she demands that he take on her wayward and troubled great niece, it unlocks dark secrets from a buried violent past.
A pastor of a small church in upstate New York starts to spiral out of control after a soul-shaking encounter with an unstable environmental activist and his pregnant wife.
A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death
An escort who caters to Washington D.C.'s society ladies becomes involved in a murder case.
After years of separation, Irina and her minister brother, Paul, reunite in New Orleans in this erotic tale of the supernatural. When zoologists capture a wild panther, Irina is drawn to the cat -- and the zoo curator is drawn to her. Soon, Irina's brother will have to reveal the family secret: that when sexually aroused, they turn into predatory jungle cats.
Carved from a lifetime of experience that runs the gamut from incarceration to liberation, Dog Eat Dog is the story of three men who are all out of prison and now have the task of adapting themselves to civilian life.
Also Directed by Kim Ki-duk
A wife, overwhelmed with hatred for her husband, inflicts an unspeakable wound on their son, as the family heads towards horrific destruction.
A loan shark is forced to reconsider his violent lifestyle after the arrival of a mysterious woman claiming to be his long-lost mother.
A condemned prisoner slowly falls in love with the married female artist who decorates his prison cell. Jin is a convicted killer awaiting execution on Death Row; Yeon is a lonely artist locked in a loveless marriage.
A group of very different people set sail on an old warship. The passengers include a senator with his son, a newly-wed couple, a mysterious old man, a group of sex workers and a gang of violent criminals. At first the aggressive behaviour of the thugs and their leader is directed at the first class passengers, but then more and more indiscriminately against the rest of those on board. Rape is followed by murder and it’s not long before the first of numerous and increasingly brutal mutinies takes place.
With a red-light district in Seoul being demolished, the residents there find they have to relocate. Jin-a opts to leave Seoul and heads to the eastern city of Pohang. There she takes up residence in a boarding house run by a small family. Besides the parents, there is a daughter attending university and a son in high school. At first Jin-a is very happy there, however she continues to sell her body driving her into confrontation with the repressed daughter, Hye-mi. Things go from bad to worse when Jin-a meets Hye-mi's boyfriend.
In Almaty, a sheltered and chaste woman named Din sees her life intertwined with the experiences of a prostitute who looks like her.
A criminal who runs a brothel becomes obsessed with a beautiful college student. When she rejects him he sets her up by introducing her to a loan shark and when she can't pay, she is forced into working in the brothel. But when she gets the chance to escape she realizes she cannot return to her former life.
A journey of a Korean girl who wanders around Europe to find her boyfriend.
Two Korean ex-pats in Paris are recruited by a French mobster. The duo find themselves at war with their mobster recruiters and each other.
Documentary on director Kim Ki-Duk looking back at his film career.
Also Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Thirteen filmmakers talk about Henri Langlois and their relationship with him.
Little Buddha is a movie about the life of Siddhartha starring Keanu Reeves and Bridget Fonda and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century.
While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.
Enrico Berlinguer (Sassari, May 25, 1922 - Padua, June 11, 1984) was an Italian politician, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1972 until his death.
Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in a basement.
Roman police detectives interrogate a series of potential perpetrators in their struggle to determine whom to arrest for the brutal murder of a beautiful prostitute whose body is discovered in a park on the day of a torrential rainstorm. One by one, the prime suspects -- girl-crazy teenager Nino, pickpocket Canticchia, a soldier on leave, a tourist and a pimp -- recount the events of the day to the police, each insisting he is innocent.
Athos Magnani, a young researcher, returns to Tara, where his father was killed in 1936 in uncleared circumstances, before his birth. As the son untangles the web of lies the story of the assassination is constructed from, he finds himself ensnared in the same web.
Also Directed by Catherine Breillat
A music video directed by Catherine Breillat, featuring the music of Elodie Frégé.
An adaptation of the classic tale of a wealthy aristocrat with a blue beard.
Georges Deblache is a police inspector who is past middle age and who is so despondent about his life that he refuses to have a medical check-up, even though he suspects he has cancer. His partner is Didier Theron, who has recently married a woman whom he has worshipful feelings for -- feelings which don't stop him from routinely bedding the many women of color he encounters while doing his job. Georges takes a keen interest in his partner's unrealistically appreciated wife and pushes his way into her not entirely unwilling arms.
A man rescues a woman from a suicide attempt in a gay nightclub. Walking the streets together, she propositions him: She'll pay him to visit her at her isolated house for four consecutive nights. There he will silently watch her. He's reluctant, but agrees. As the four nights progress, they become more intimate with each other, and a mutual fascination/revulsion develops. By the end of the four-day "contract", these two total strangers will have had a profound impact on each other.
A music video directed by Catherine Breillat, featuring the music of Elodie Frégé.
A young French man and an older English woman spend one night together on a ship.
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.
Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third. The playboy's mix of depression and misogyny ends their unconsummated affair, so Lili has to hunt elsewhere.
Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.
Breillat's first new film in 7 years.
Also Directed by James Franco
Unused footage from Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private Idaho is re-contextualized in James Franco's tribute to River Phoenix.
Two genius brothers grow up and grow apart as one becomes a successful surgeon and the other pursues a drug-fueled high life.
Filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews re-imagine the lost 40 minutes from "Cruising" as a starting point to a broader exploration of sexual and creative freedom.
Birth of a Poet is a dramatic short film that captures the moment Stephen Dobyns transitions from a disillusioned journalist to an emerging poet. It is adapted from autobiographical poems.
Lurid monologues about rape and murder.
Tom (Tennessee) Williams, an aspiring writer in his 20s, lives with and negligent father. Tom attempts to maintain peace in the family while also dealing with his depressed and anti-social sister. Struggling against the societal pressures and expectations of him, Tennessee is determined to hone in on his artistic talent and achieve greatness. Directed by James Franco, Tenn focuses on a young Tennessee Williams struggling to find his voice and at the same time his true self as a gay man in 1930's St. Louis.
A young actor arrives in Hollywood in 1969 during a transitional time in the Industry.
The story of writer Charles Bukowski's formative years from childhood to high school and his struggles with an abusive father, disfiguring acne, alcohol addiction, and his initial attempts at writing.
Based on the 1930 classic by Faulkner, it is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest to honor her wish to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson.
La Passione is a decadent and beautifully shot trip that riffs on Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, if it were shot on acid and starred the ATL Twins as demons.
Also Directed by Walter Salles
In the periphery of São Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dênis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier.
When the inmate Maria do Socorro Nobre reads an article about the Polish artist Franz Krajcberg in Veja magazine, she decides to write a letter to him. Socorro was sentenced to more than twenty-one years in a prison for women in Salvador, Bahia, while Franz is a tormented artist that lost his family and lived his childhood in a ghetto in Poland but survived the Holocaust. Franz moved to Brazil and recovered life wish living close to nature and inspires Socorro to dream with life again.
American photojournalist Peter Mandrake becomes embroiled in Brazil's dangerous underworld of pimps, drug gangs and arms smugglers when he sets out to find the killer of a local call girl.
Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.
A documentary about the fathers of Bossa Nova: João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.
A look into the 25 years of career of famous musician Chico Buarque and his influence in Brazilian culture.
Also Directed by Claire Denis
In 2014, artist Olafur Eliasson and filmmaker Claire Denis connected for the first time to explore and discuss their common fascination with phenomena that have not yet been fully explained by science – such as black holes – and their shared interest in abstraction. This short film by Denis, contemplating tests for Eliasson's work ‘Contact’, is one outcome of that conversation which would eventually lead to their collaboration on Denis's film High Life (2018), in which Eliasson designed the light installations at the films end.
One of a series of short films inspired by paintings. In this video, Jacques de Loustal's Le Contemplatif or "Duo".
An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.
Claire Denis goes to Eastern Chad to the Breidjing camp, the home of 40,000 refugees from Darfur. With great humility, she tells the stories of these men and women, victims of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes that this century has seen so far.
Monte and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to the outer reaches of the solar system. They must now rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.
Set in 1984 during the Nicaraguan Revolution, the film follows a mysterious English businessman and headstrong American journalist who strike up a passionate romance. They soon become embroiled in a dangerous labyrinth of lies and conspiracies and are forced to try and escape the country, with only each other to trust and rely on.
Short documentary about an archetypal library concept for kids in Clamart.
He is an Aluku man, one of the five tribes of Maroons who survives in the forest during 400 years after escaping from the Dutch sugarcane plantations. All the Maroons are issued originally from the West coast of Africa. They were taken as slaves.
Paris, 1995. Laure is about to meet friends for dinner. But on her way out, she discovers that the entire city is stalled by a massive transit strike. When a handsome stranger offers her a ride, Laure takes a highly charged, impossibly erotic detour.
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.
Also Directed by Amos Gitai
A young couple marry in France in the 1940s and the film follows the arc of their marriage over the next decade. As France recovers from the trauma of the war, the wife finds herself increasingly caught up in acquiring material possessions while the husband prefers a more traditional lifestyle.
Life in a Tel Aviv apartment complex, an urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Hezi—who's older, balding and married—rent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal Chinese immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police detective.
The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.
1992. In Wuppertal, in Germany, two skinheads killed a man who claimed to be Jewish. Amos Gitai questions the witnesses, the residents, and the protagonists of the trial.
Itzhak Rabin's murder ended all efforts of peace, and with him the whole left wing of Israel died. The movie shows the last of his days as prime minister, and what led to his murder.
Documentary about a house and its politically divided ownership over time.
With the feel of experimental film, Gitai mixes storytelling, readers' theater, cityscapes (usually seen from moving trains), and desolate landscapes to mediate on the act of creation. What if a golem were fashioned out of dirt, much like Adam, and came to life? The film imagines it, in the desert and in Moscow. Interspersed are stories of a 14th-century Tuscan artist's creation of a tower that plays music when the wind blows, of a film director, and of Jeremiah and Sirat. In what ways is making a movie like creating a golem?
1974 Gitai super8 short film
1972 Gitai super8 short film
Also Directed by Monte Hellman
An interview with the producers of Monte Hellman's 1971 film TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.
Trapped in a house of horror, seven people discover that the only way they'll get out alive is to tell their scariest stories.
Three cowboys, mistaken for members of an outlaw gang, are relentlessly pursued by a posse.
The Greatest is a 1977 film about the life of boxer Muhammad Ali, in which Ali plays himself. It was directed by Tom Gries and Monte Hellman. The song "Greatest Love of All", later remade by Whitney Houston, was written for this film and sung by George Benson. The movie follows Ali's life from the 1960 Olympics to his regaining the heavyweight crown from George Foreman in their famous "Rumble in the Jungle" fight in 1974.
This adventure is set in the Philippines and chronicles the exploits of two men who survive a plane crash in the jungle. One of the men is an avaricious killer who has come to the islands to search for a fortune in diamonds. The other is an international adventurer. Now they must somehow overcome their vast personal differences and desires to survive in the steamy wilderness
During WWII, a three-man commando team places its trust in the hands of a band of Filipino resistors, as they try to knock out a Japenese communication center.
Monte Hellman's short portrait of Francis Ford Coppola discussing business and craft at home and on the set of his Zoetrope Studios.
This interview features director Monte Hellman and singer-songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson. It was filmed in Los Angeles in the summer of 2007.
Ricky Caldwell, the notorious 'Killer Santa Claus', awakens from a six-year coma after being kept alive on life-support by a slightly crazed doctor experimenting with ESP and other special abilities. Ricky targets a young, clairvoyant blind woman, named Laura, whom is traveling with her brother Chris, and his girlfriend Jerri to their grandmother's house for Christmas Eve, and Ricky decides to go after her, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake.
Set in 1950's Hollywood, two filmmakers become unlikely friends: Leo, who writes violent B-movies, and Stanley, a promising director. Nothing can come between them, until the day Stanley shows up with a mysterious girlfriend, Nina.
Also Directed by Zhangke Jia
Shows a market where puppies are bought and sold. Several puppies are placed in a cloth bag, and they struggle to break free. One bites through the bag, pokes his head, and is observed in his triumph and then confusion.
An ancestral city; through its delicious botanical garden and its branched canals, we observe the clues and traces of its ancient culture. Two couples of men and women, former lovers, meet again one year later. The yesterday's breath of youth is still perceptible in their conversations. Is it still possible for us to love? Does youth really have an end? Like the networks linking the old city, what type of ecological existence does their culture require? Written by Venice Film Festival
Jia Zhangke brings to this edition of the Beautiful series The Hedonists, an engaging drama about several unemployed Shanxi coalminers looking for work.
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
In "Spaces #2", 7 internationally acclaimed directors shot, after commissioning by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, a short film at home, making their own timely comment on the new reality that we live in. The project is inspired by the book "Species of Spaces" by the French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist, Georges Perec and the days of quarantine. The idea is to create a film at home, using the environment, the people or the animals in that space. The only outdoor areas that may be used are outdoor living spaces, such as the terrace, the garden, the balcony and the stairwell. "Visit" is Jia Zhangke's submission.
Xiao Shan, a temporary worker at the Hongyuan Restaurant, has just been fired by his boss Zhao Guoqing. Deciding to leave Beijing and returns to his home in Anyang, he goes to see a series of people from his hometown who have also been living in Beijing-construction workers, train ticket scalpers, university students, attendant, prostitutes-but no one wants to go back with him. Dispirited and confused, he searches out one after another of his old friends who are still in Beijing. Finally he leaves his wild long hair, the symbol of his life in the city, at a roadside barber stand as his offering to Beijing.
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Chengdu nowadays. The state owned factory 420 shuts down to give way to a complex of luxury apartments called "24 CITY". Three generations, eight characters : old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories melt into the History of China.
China's greatest living filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Platform, The World) travels with acclaimed painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China's Three Gorges Dam project. In DONG, Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being "de-constructed" by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
Also Directed by Michele Placido
The life and loves of poet Sibilla Aleramo (Laura Morante), focusing on her relationship with Dino Campana (Stefano Accorsi).
A doctor's life takes a mysterious turn when his ambulance plunges into a river.
"Tomorrow, I won't be alive anymore," Francesco tersely tells his family, gathered for dinner. He has decided to commit suicide because he can't bear living without his wife, who died three months earlier, and can't imagine the idea of getting used to the pain. After the initial shock, his parents and his sisters try to make him change his mind.
Italian Revolution, 1968. Police officer, Nicolas, wants to become an actor. He goes out in plain clothes and meets Laura who is among students against the government, Vietnam War and who seek sexual freedom. One day, his identity gets exposed and she leaves him.
An intriguing look at a sinister web of power,linking politics and the mafia in modern day Italy.
Kwaku, a young African medical student, arrives in Italy where he is to meet his brother Job (nicknamed Pummarò.) This one is a tomato picker in the Naples region and works in extreme conditions to be able to pay his brother's studies. But to Kwaku's dismay, Job has disappeared. The young student then decides to do everything he can to trace missing Pummarò.
Also Directed by Ermanno Olmi
When a group of African immigrants builds a cardboard village between the pews of a church soon to be closed, an elderly priest must choose between his calling and his orders.
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.
Ermanno Olmi has returned to documentary filmmaking and makes a journey through valleys, living rocks and the culture of the Valtellina hillsides.
Live performance from Oper Leipzig, 26 November 2005.
Italian maestro Ermanno Olmi tells the tale of the journey of the Magi in this lyrical odyssey. The film focuses on a wise man who interprets his sighting of a comet streaking through the sky as a spiritual message. Joined by two associates, soldiers, villagers and others, the Magi sets out on a journey that tests his beliefs and strength.
A self-assured, middle-aged advertising executive has his life upset by an unforeseen accident.
Based on the diary Pope John XXIII kept between the ages of 14 and 18, his lifelong concern for tolerance, the underprivileged, and world peace is told. Rod Steiger, in the central role, acts as "intermediary" between the Pope and the audience, interpreting John's words, thoughts and actions. Steiger visits the actual places in which John lived, recreating the conditions, environment, and forces that affected his development. Through this unusual technique, we are brought close to an extraordinary man - one who's able to win the love of many people of all faiths.
"Documentary, showing workmen erecting one of the pylons and stringing up three cables which will eventually reach to Milan." - BFI
An accidental interruption of the S. Giacomo Electric Line requires the intervention of a team of specialized technicians. The short movie follows these men to the place of intervention, dwelling on the beautiful snow-capped landscapes and the local inhabitants engaged in their daily activities.
Also Directed by Salvatore Mereu
Raffaele has just assembled his little pile of grain, which serves as his provisions for an entire year. Not wishing to get caught unprepared, he has been sleeping in the countryside for days, far from everybody, waiting for the wind to arrive and help him at last to separate the wheat-grains from the chaff. But the wind will not show up. Only Angelino comes to visit him every day, making him feel less lonely. Maybe one day, when he is all grown up, Raffaele will lend him his indomitable mare and he will finally manage to ride her. But Angelino has no intention of waiting.
Four separate-but-interconnected stories - one for each season - about life in Sardinia.
The old Sardinian shepherd Costantino Saru is persuaded by his son and his Danish daughter-in-law to set up a farmhouse (called Assandira) in his old abandoned sheepfold.
3 August, Cagliari: a poor neighborhood. At three in the morning eleven-year-old Cate is woken by the screams of her eccentric neighbor. Cate wants to run away from that apartment, from her numerous and problematic siblings and her tyrannical father. Only Gigi, a neighbor, is worthy of her love. She does not want to end up like her sister Mandarina, who got pregnant at thirteen. Or like Samantha, the neighborhood sex siren. And today, on 3 August, Gigi’s life is in danger: Tonio, Cate’s brother, wants to kill him. Cate warns Luna, her best friend. The two of them spend the longest day of their lives between the city, the sea and a thousand adventures. But her beloved Gigi is in danger. And when everything seems lost, during the night a beautiful woman appears out of nowhere: the mysterious Aleni, a witch who apparently can see into people’s futures...
Also Directed by Shekhar Kapur
Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phooland Devi finds freedom only as an avenging warrior, the eponymous Bandit Queen. Devi becomes a kind a bloody Robin Hood; this extraordinary biographical film offers both a vivid portrait of a driven woman and a savage critique of the society that made her.
The story of the ascension to the throne and the early reign of Queen Elizabeth the First, the endless attempts by her council to marry her off, the Catholic hatred of her and her romance with Lord Robert Dudley.
The story, set in 1875, follows a British officer (Heath Ledger) who resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers which symbolize cowardice. To redeem his honor he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves the lives of those who branded him a coward.
New York, I Love You delves into the intimate lives of New Yorkers as they grapple with, delight in and search for love. Journey from the Diamond District in the heart of Manhattan, through Chinatown and the Upper East Side, towards the Village, into Tribeca, and Brooklyn as lovers of all ages try to find romance in the Big Apple.
D.K. Malhotra lives a comfortable lifestyle with his wife, Indu, and two school-going daughters, Pinky and Minni. He works in the office of an Architect. One day while the family is relaxing, D.K. gets a phone call that results in him bringing home a young school-going boy by the name of Rahul. Indu is shocked to learn that Rahul is D.K.'s son from another woman, Bhavana, who is no more. D.K. does his best to make Rahul comfortable, but fails. Rahul also feels that Indu does not really like him, though Pinky and Minni have taken to him in a big way. Finally, D.K. decides to admit Rahul in a boarding school in far off Nainital. Rahul reluctantly goes along with this new-found uncle/friend. It is when Rahul is asked to put his papers together for school that Rahul finds out that D.K. is his biological father. Watch what happens when Rahul disappears from D.K.'s house, and the impact this has on D.K., Indu, and her two daughters.
The plot is currently unknown.
Three estranged sisters reunite one night when the oldest comes back for her two younger sisters after leaving them years before in mysterious circumstances.
A poor but big-hearted man takes orphans into his home. After discovering his scientist father's invisibility device, he rises to the occasion and fights to save his children and all of India from the clutches of a megalomaniac.
When Queen Elizabeth's reign is threatened by ruthless familial betrayal and Spain's invading army, she and her shrewd adviser must act to safeguard to the lives of her people.
Also Directed by Ulrich Seidl
Hope, the third film in the PARADISE TRILOGY, tells the story of the 13-year-old Melanie. While her mother (Teresa) travels to Kenya, Melanie spends her holiday in the Austrian countryside at a strict diet camp for overweight teenagers. Under the supervision of a tattooed trainer and a creepy doctor, the teenagers attempt to do sports during the day and secretly get drunk in the evening. Between physical education and nutrition counseling, pillow fights and her first cigarette, Melanie falls in love with the doctor who is 40 years her senior.
In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.
Six Catholics share their thoughts and problems with Jesus in different churches. The camera accompanies them.
A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life..
Two men, two brothers, their childhood home in Lower Austria. They drink to their late mother, they bury her. Then they drive back to their real lives. One back to Romania, to resume living his newly begun life, the other to Rimini, to go back to dreaming his old dream. But sooner or later both their pasts will catch up with them.
Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too 'bony' for him. Object of Rene's fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine ('sinus' is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist's day-to-day life.
Looks at two communities on either side of the Czech - Austrian border. There's an elderly man in Austria looking for a new wife, and he meets a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.
Disappointed by failed relationships and the demands set by local women, more and more Austrians search for happiness in a marriage with women from Thailand and the Philippines. Asked about the positive properties of their Asian spouses, the answer of the Austrian husbands quite often is, "They don't talk back." Protagonist of the film is Karl S., a teacher in Vienna in his forties. Following his failed marriage he is now seeking a durable partnership and is on the lookout for a wife who doesn't question her traditional role. His solution: a wife from the Far East. Karl S. rounds up experiences and visits several mixed couples to get a clearer picture and to have his idea proven right. The film accompanies him on his search for the ideal woman and gives an insight into the imagination of these "last real men" who at the beginning seem to have hit the jackpot with their decisions
Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.
4 directors decided to investigate why Jörg Haider's far right "Freedom Party" won the election in Austria in 1999.
Also Directed by Karim Aïnouz
Donato fails in his attempt to save a drowning man, and meets one of the man's friends. He decides to start his life over, but pieces of his past keep coming after him.
A documentary about Berlin's former airport Tempelhof. A film about Departures and Arrivals. And about those Berliners who come here to escape from their daily lives and those refugees who came here to finally arrive somewhere.
In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.
A trip, sort of a daydream in the Brazilian badlands. Remote places reveal traditions and customs of a landscape that is at once primitive and contemporary, regional and globalised.
The Earth pos-pandemic.
José Renato, a 35-year-old geologist, is sent out on a solitary expedition to the hinterlands of northeastern Brazil. The purpose of the trip is to assess possible routes for a canal that will connect the area with the only major river in the region. As the field trip progresses, it becomes clear that Renato shares with those places the same emptiness, sense of abandonment and isolation.
An experimental collective film lasting little more than an hour, compiled from 10 episodes by a total of 14 different young Brazilian filmmakers. The project was an initiative of the directing duo Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande, who sent a ‘letter of concern’ to inspire the participants. In it, a 16-year-old girl wrote about her dreams, which have been translated by the directors into films about love, youth and the possibilities of cinema.
Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones. Produced by Strand Releasing and Connor Jessup.
Also Directed by Atom Egoyan
Egoyan juxtaposes home-video images of his son Arshile with a self-portrait of the famed Armenian artist, Arshile Gorky; Egoyan narrates in English, while his wife narrates in Armenian. The self-portrait made from a photo of the artist as a child at the time of the great massacre of the Armenians is used as a focus for meditations on the nature of self-awareness, artistic expression, and the relationship between the artist and the viewer.
An ambitious reporter probes the reasons behind the sudden split of a 1950s comedy team.
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.
A documentary about a journey to Beirut
An uptight insurance man and his film-censor wife become a kinky couple's landlords.
A man uses an instant photo booth with bizarre results.
Short telefilm.
Six stories about Montreal. 1: A young housewife from Toronto samples the nightlife using basic French. 2: The tale of a painting of Montreal's first mayor, Jacques Viger. 3: During a hockey game, Madeleine tries to tell Roger she wants a divorce after forty years of marriage. 4: A visitor to a conference on pictographs arrives at the airport, where the female customs officer steals a momento from each person. 5: As she is being driven to the hospital in an ambulance after an auto accident, Sarah recalls her life. 6: At a diplomatic reception, an older woman reminisces about her grand love in Montreal.
A variety of characters, some close relatives, others distant strangers, are each affected by the making of a film about the Armenian Genocide of 1915.
Also Directed by Pablo Trapero
The "Villa Virgin", a shantytown in the slums of Buenos Aires. Julian and Nicolas, two priests and long-standing friends, work tirelessly to help the local people. Julian uses his political connections to oversee the construction of a hospital. Nicolas joins him following the failure of a project he was leading in the jungle, after paramilitary forces assassinated members of the community. Deeply troubled, he finds a little comfort in Luciana, a young, attractive, atheist social worker. As Nicolas' faith weakens, tension and violence between the slum drug dealing cartels grow. And when work on the hospital is halted by ministerial decree, the fuse is lit...
The portrait of a man and his attempts to make things up with life after losing his job.
Zapa is a locksmith in a quiet and little town lost somewhere in the province of Buenos Aires. The work is quite slow, and hours seem to pass slowly. Polaco, the owner of the shop, sends him on a job that consists of opening a safe at an office. The next day, Zapa is imprisoned for being responsible of robbing the place. Ismael, his uncle, a retired policeman, bails him out and sends him to Buenos Aires. Zapa becomes an aspiring officer in the Buenos Aires Police. He gets to his new home city, takes the instructional course, works at a precinct, has a love affair with a teacher and starts to see his life turn into a strange fiction.
A wedding invite from an estranged sibiling inspires a grandmother to assemble her family and embark on a roadtrip in a broken down caravan.
A making-of recording of the shooting of Gatica, el Mono by Leonardo Favio.
In Argentina, between 1982 and 1985, the Puccios, a well-established family of San Isidro, an upper-class suburb of Buenos Aires, kidnap several people and hold them as hostages for a ransom.
In Patagonia, a successful interior designer's life falls apart after he suffers a horrific accident.
Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.
20 short films about human rights.
Also Directed by Brillante Mendoza
This omnibus film brings together three globally acclaimed directors from Asia with a common theme 'Living Together in Asia' to depict the lives of characters who journey between Japan, Cambodia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Brillante Mendoza grapples with the issue of loss of national identity and home, with a story set in the Obihiro area of Hokkaido and Manila in the Philippines. Isao Yukisada directs a story in Malaysia where the Japanese army was once stationed but is now home to many Japanese retirees living out their remaining years. An elderly man has parted from his family in Japan to live alone in Penang, but when a new helper comes to the house, he slowly opens his mind and an unexpected bond forms between the two. Finally director Sotho Kulikar conveys a beautiful but heart-rending love story between a Japanese man and Cambodian woman that unfolds across past and present against the backdrop of Cambodia's civil war.
Short film about street kids.
This is a Filipino omnibus film about three different journeys.
Chased by police, bike thief Isaac asks his boss for help but gets the cold shoulder. He then plans vengeance against the boss... Payback depicts a man caught in a slum's crime ring.
A marine biologist tasked to rehabilitate a fish sanctuary, falls for Dennis, his diving assistant. The situation takes an unexpected turn when Jason's wife, Abby, finds out of the clandestine relationship between Jason and Dennis.
Plot unknown.
The story of the rebuilding of their lives by the survivors of the disaster caused by Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, particularly focusing on the struggles of a mother who lost their children.
Following the death of his father and a chance meeting with an abusive romance novelist, a masseur working in a gay massage parlor struggles to make sense of his unfulfilling relationships while simultaneously assisting his mother in preparing his father for burial. Twenty-year-old Iliac may not be the best masseur in the parlor, but when he catches the eye of a cold and calculating romance novelist looking for a cheap thrill, the icy indifference displayed by his paying lover does little more to warm the spirits than his sexually charged but emotionally distant girlfriend. Despite the resentment Iliac feels towards his late father for abandoning the family and embarking on a suicidal alcohol binge, the lovelorn youth nevertheless makes the journey home to be there for his grieving mother in her time of need.
A digital feature has five episodes that all deal with wild gay fantasies involving men in uniform. It starts with "Biyahe," about a jilted taxi driver and his jealous passenger who find comfort in each other's lovesick arms. The second episode is "Linya," about a lonely homeowner whose phone conks out. Two handsome repairmen arrive and they end up engaging in a dizzying threesome. Next is "Laro," about four basketball players who are taking a shower in the locker room after an intense game, and a shy guy who takes a peek at them and later joins in the fun. "Bilis" is about a hunky delivery boy in a hurry who delivers pizza to a bored yuppie who is working overtime in his office. They get instantly attracted upon seeing each other. The last episode is "Bantay," about a horny security guard in the graveyard shift. He sees two lovers fighting. Rhyme dumps Jon and Jon finds solace in the arms of the easy going guard.
The film is a collection of one-minute short films created by 60 filmmakers from around the world on the theme of the death of cinema.
Also Directed by Peter Chan
Memories: A woman wakes up on a street without memory. A husband cannot remember why his wife left him. The woman wanders the streets trying to contact the only phone number she has on her. The husband see's her ghost in his apartment and discovers her mutilated body in a large bag in his home (Korea). The Wheel: Extravagant cursed puppets cause fires, deaths, physical pain and a little girl to be possessed (Thailand). Going Home: A father goes in search of his missing son and is abducted by a strange man. The strangers wife has died of cancer three years prior but he keeps her in his apartment under the impression she will 'wake up' (Hong Kong)
Music producer Sam and his cross-dressing protege Wing have finally professed their love for another, but now what?
The film is based on the China women's national volleyball team's stories spread over more than 40 years.
A psychic widow (Anita Yuen) makes a bargain with Death (Roy Chiao) in order to save her son's (Alan Tam) life.
A sinful martial arts expert wants to start a new tranquil life, only to be hunted by a determined detective and his former master.
Wing is a devoted fan of popular singer Rose who is involved in a topsy-turvy relationship with her charismatic producer Sam. Willing to go to any length to meet Rose, the willowy Wing disguises herself as a man, and with a twist of fate is chosen to be the next budding star for the record company.
A love triangle develops during the making of a musical in mainland China.
During the economic reform period of the 80’s, three undergraduates bind together by a common ambition – to live the American dream. They are Cheng Dongqing, a hillbilly who refuses to accept his destiny of being a farmer; Meng Xiaojun, a self-confident, cynical intellectual; and Wang Yang, an idealistic romantic poet. Xiaojun is the first to obtain an US Visa for studying abroad. Yang follows but decides to remain in China for his beloved. Poor Dongqing is rejected by the US Embassy repeatedly. Baffled, he reluctantly accepts the job as an English instructor in the university but eventually gets fired for teaching tutorial classes in private. Across the Pacific, Xiaojun fails to find a decent job and is driven to work as a busboy in a diner.
Drawing on remarkable true stories, Peter Chan delivers a moving drama about child abduction in China. Huang Bo stars as a father whose young son disappears in the streets of a big city. He sets out on a search across China, stopping at nothing to find him. In this star-studded cast, Zhao Wei plays the role of a mother from a poor rural area.
Alan and Eric are childhood friends who are separated when Eric moves to America. They are reunited in Hong Kong when Eric finds Alan at the cafe where the latter is working as a waiter and singer. Together they forge a business which is destroyed in a storm. Meanwhile, both have met a lady named Olive, and both strive for her affection.
Also Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Three people in Tokyo take a surreal voyage of self-discovery through memory and nightmares. "O" intends suicide while talking on a cell-phone with a stranger he meets on line who plans a simultaneous suicide. Events take a horrifying turn. Keiko Kirishima is a cool, seemingly emotionless police detective, brilliant but off-putting. She's faced with two mutilated corpses who appear to have killed themselves, but she's not sure. A cell-phone number links the deaths. She calls on Akumu Tantei, a poor and suicidal young man who has the ability to enter people's dreams. He's reluctant to help. His past haunts him. A subconscious duel of terror and blood awaits the three.
Shinya Tsukamoto's animated promo for the Ca' Foscari Cinema in Venice.
"The Law of Causality" documents a live perfomance at Shibuya O-NEST, which took place on May 26, 2004. Director of "Tetsuo The Iron Man" Shinya Tsukamoto's crew filmed the gig, which features all new material based around metal percussion and custom intsruments built by Chu Ishikawa.
'Female' is comprised of five short films adapted from five novels by female authors. Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetsuo Shinohara, Ryuichi Hiroki, Miwa Nishikawa, and Suzuki Matsuo.
Set during the Edo period, "Zan" follows the life a ronin, Mokunoshin Tsuzuki (Sosuke Ikematsu), and those around him. Mokunoshin Tsuzuki spends time in a village helping farmers there. To keep his sword skills sharp, he spars daily with a farmer's son Ichisuke (Ryusei Maeda). His sister Yu (Yu Aoi) watches them. Meanwhile, the nation is about to undergo major unrest and potentially a civil war. A group of outlaw ronin led by Sezaemon Genda (Tatsuya Nakamura) enters the village.
A successful doctor, Yukio's picture perfect life is gradually wrecked, and taken over by his avenging twin brother, who bumps off his family members one by one and reclaims his lover who is now Yukio's wife.
Set in an anonymous Japanese metropolis, the film tells the tale of shy career woman, Rinko, and Shigehiko, her hygiene-obsessed, workaholic husband. The couple explore their sexuality in a number of ways, causing their lives to be disrupted.
A businessman, Tsuda, runs into a childhood friend, Tajuki, on the subway. Tajuki is working as a semiprofessional boxer. Tsuda soon begins to suspect that Tajuki might be having an affair with his fiancée Hizuru. After an altercation, Tsuda begins training rigorously himself, leading to an extremely bloody, violent confrontation.
A "metal fetishist", driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he's made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman and his girlfriend. The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.
An American named Anthony is living and working in Tokyo and married to a Japanese woman. When their son is killed by the same driver who creates the Tetsuos in previous films, he makes the transformation into Tetsuo.
Also Directed by Todd Solondz
Abe is a man who is in his thirties and who lives with his parents. He works regretfully for his father while pursuing his hobby of collecting toys. Aware that his family doesn't think highly of him, he tries to spark a relationship with Miranda, who recently moved back home after a failed literary/academic career. Miranda agrees to marry Abe out of desperation, but things go awry.
Aviva is thirteen, awkward and sensitive. Her mother Joyce is warm and loving, as is her father, Steve, a regular guy who does have a fierce temper from time to time. The film revolves around her family, friends and neighbors.
The story follows a young male protagonist as he recalls the babysitters of his youth.
Wiener-Dog tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading a certain kind of comfort and joy. Man’s best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted life lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip picking up some depressed mariachis along the way. Wiener-Dog then encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter—all longing for something more.
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
This film focuses on the trials and tribulations of Ira (Todd Solondz), who is an unsuccessful playwright trying to find himself in New York City.
His first film shot with sound, Feelings is a two and a half minute movie made as an NYU film school assignment in 1984. Solondz himself takes the lead role of a sensitive young man who finds he can no longer endure life without his beloved. Photographed by Andy Day, the film is set to Todd Solondz's personal rendition of the song "Feelings" by Morris Albert.
Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos. Follows Solondz's film Happiness (1998).
The lives of many individuals connected by the desire for happiness, often from sources usually considered dark or evil.
Solondz’s 1985 student short film “Schatt’s Last Shot” provides an ideal entry point to his unflinching universe of dark comic despair. A young Solondz stars in the 10-minute short as geeky high schooler Ezra Schatt, a neurotic, primitive headcase of the young Woody Allen variety. Buried under thick, unseemly glasses and an endlessly dazed expression, Ezra’s worst enemy is basketball. Unable to make a single basket under the brutal pressures of his vulgar gym teacher (“You’re shit, Schatt!”), Ezra also fails at both impressing the cheerleader of his dreams and realizing his aspirations of attending MIT.
Also Directed by Sion Sono
Koike Minami (Hikari Mitsushima) returns from USA to Japan to accomplish her deceased twin sister's wish to win a competition and sing with Avril Lavigne on the stage in a concert in Tokyo.
Shiro’s struggle with his father’s cancer and impending death leads to a realization that he must communicate his love and admiration for him before it’s too late. A series of flashbacks reveals their relationship over time, and the trouble Shiro faced connecting to his strict father who was also his teacher and soccer coach. With a consuming secret of his own, Shiro, now in his late twenties and about to get engaged, must eventually learn how to share the pain of it with his loved ones.
Mitsuko Murakami and lover to put the passion to balloon in the hot-air balloon Circle "absent-minded" began, had gathered young people holding a variety of thoughts. But "absent-minded" is unawares disbanded. It from five years of month is only day, between the circle members "Murakami was traffic accident" around in touch with members it had become apart in the wake will be held again large banquet remember a collection Murakami. But they had been noticed. that this is the last fool commotion .... Yumi Arai classic "of Lonely Room motif ", the youth drama depicting a moratorium young people and painful love pattern.
Madly explores love in all its permutations in six short films from a vibrant group of filmmakers representing Japan, Argentina, the UK, the US, India, and Australia. All forms of love are on display in this anthology. And all manners of feelings expressed from jubilance to depression are done so strongly.
When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Does the new all-girl group Desert have anything to do with it? Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.
Vagina And Virgin is more an experimental work from which you may have an idea how Sono thinks about the relationship of vagina and virgin.
Tatsuhiko Shiratori works as a scout, recruiting girls to work in the adult entertainment business. He movies to Yokohama from Shinjuku, Tokyo. He comes into conflict with Masaki Taki who is the CEO of a scout company.
This faux-documentary follows a butoh master, a fashion designer, and a filmmaker racing against time to create art and help a young girl in love.
Shin is a Japanese university student living a boring and meaningless life. One day, he spots a book titled Dangerous Ways to Walk the World, in which he finds a page written about hazards in New-York. Eager to get out, he jets off to New-York to find this inspiration.
A coming of age story about a teenage girl who lives in the Wind Village in Yamagata Prefecture. The film also features award winning director Koji Wakamatsu as a spirit from the wind.
Also Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
A fluorescent tube illuminates an empty playground in the evening. Nearby a flash of light is projected on a makeshift screen. This outdoor movie is a portrait of a village repeatedly struck by lightning. As night falls, the silhouette figures of young men emerge, they are playing with a football raging with fire. They take turns kicking the ball which leaves illuminated trails in the grass. The lightning on the screen flickers amid the fire and the smoke rising from the ground. The game intensifies with each kick that sends the fireball soaring into the air. Finally the teens burn the screen and crowd around it to witness the blazing canvas, behind which is revealed the ghostly white beam of a projector. Phantoms of Nabua is part of the multi-platform Primitive project which focuses on a concept of remembrance and extinction and is set in the northeast of Thailand.
0116643225059 is an early experimental film by Weerasethakul made during his time at SAIC. The work is about a long-distance telephone conversation between the filmmaker and his beloved mother in Khon Kaen, Thailand. Weerasethakul superimposed a photograph of his mother in her youth alongside his own image and his apartment in Chicago. It renders a strong bond between the artist and his family.
Taking the recent tsunami in Asia as its starting point, the filmmakers have used the idea of a ghost seen wandering along the rocky coastline of a Thai island and, in a life-affirming gesture, they have invited some local children to direct the film for them, suggesting and filming the movements of the actor-ghost.
Created in celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this short essay centres on a monologue delivered by a reincarnation of the philosopher in twenty-first century Thailand.
The work is part of the Memoria Project, the first major series of work that is set outside of Weerasethakul’s home country. Given his affinity for the Amazon, of which Thai jungle tales were originally inspired, Weerasethakul has started to explore South America - and since 2017, has been developing a film based in Colombia. He is drawn to its topography, where active volcanoes and landslides ceaselessly transform natural landscapes. The Memoria Project presents both personal and collective memories, while retaining the artist’s fascination with illumination. A vital part of the video and photographic works is the presence of a lone protagonist on the beach. Weerasethakul worked with Canadian actor Connor Jessup who visited him during the filming of a documentary at Nuquí area in Chocó Department, western Colombia. Here, the actor is a spirit that contemplates the artist’s journey, his dream of both real and imaginary films.
Petch, one of the young men of Nabua, composes and plays this song about his village. One evening, he sang a song to Weerasethakul’s film crew regarding an August event when the former members of the Communist Party of Thailand gathered to commemorate the first shoot out in the field more than 45 years ago. Weerasethakul layers Petch’s song with an image of his friend, Kamgiang, whose grandfather was killed by the soldiers in the field not far from his home.
Invisibility displays Weerasethakul’s continued interest in the issue of perception and memory. The installation takes threads from his recent films, Cemetery of Splendor and Fever Room, both of which feature the same actors. Here, he takes them deeper into an imaginary world and ponders the future of shared consciousness. The videos depict a landscape where the protagonists are confined to a room, along with the viewers. With no way out, they infiltrate each other’s dreams. Invisibility mirrors the troubled state of Thailand’s politics. It proposes a decayed vision of the future where one needs to constantly evade reality. The viewing experience shifts between seeing and not seeing, fact and fiction, space and void.
For a Fiery Monkey Year.
In this video diary, Weerasethakul documents the set of Primitive Project in Nabua, Thailand, particularly the scene when teenagers are hypnotized and sleep inside a time machine.
Cactus River is a diary of the time Apichatpong Weerasethakul visited a newlywed couple near the Mekong River.
Also Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues
The Red Market in Macao. The red tonalities of blood, flesh, buckets and even of the fish’s eyes, carry the audience into a strange and scary universe but also beautiful and intriguing. Rodrigues and Guerra da Mata’s camera emerges like a driving force giving us the exact balance between what exists and what we see.
Chico wakes up on his 30th birthday to the sound of his girlfriend singing “Happy Birthday” to him on his answering machine. When João wakes up in bed next to him, he realizes that this is not his typical birthday.
How would it look like, the body of Dom Afonso Henriques, first king of Portugal, tutelary figure, subject to successive mythifications throughout Portuguese history?
An impressionist and personal portrait of Lisbon. A jazz improvisation based on a score written in 1963. Guided by Paulo Rocha’s gaze and the film “Os Verdes Anos”, a look at the places in his film, which have now naturally been transformed.
João Pedro Rodrigues answers the question from the title with an autobiographical short-film.
From 7 to 25 April, 18 days of confinement during which a male blackbird takes care and guarantees the safety of its young, until they release the nest.
Nude Descending A Staircase
After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman named Odete (Ana Cristina De Oliveira) descends into madness and claims to be pregnant with the child of Rui's (Nuno Gil) late lover, Pedro (João Carreira). As grief-stricken Rui mourns Pedro's death, Odete tries to transform herself into Pedro.
Varziela, Vila do Conde, the biggest Chinatown in Portugal. A man wearing a hat and a missing woman. A high-heeled shoe, a blond wig and a Chinese dress. The confrontation between the East Wind and the Red Dragon; the cardinal points switched as in an ultimate Mahjong game.
Stranded along a sublime river fjord in northern Portugal, an ornithologist is subjected to a series of brutal and erotic Stations-of-the-Cross-style tests.
Also Directed by Haile Gerima
The story of Dorothy and her husband T.C. He is a discharged Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a "hero's welcome." Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Her life revolves around the welfare office and a community facing poverty and unemployment. As a result of the film's events, both the main characters become radicalized and Dorothy eventually turns to violence.
A film about the Maroons—freed or escaped slaves that created their own communities during slavery. Both stories are examples of Gerima’s driving motivation—sankofa, reclaiming the past in order to move forward.
In this meditative film, the everyday lives of poor Ethiopian peasants are shown using documentary as well as storytelling techniques, and the drama arises out of the timeless but still contemporary issues of their lives.
An African-American model on a film shoot in Ghana is transported into the body of a slave on a Southern plantation.
Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country.
The Ethiopian intellectual Anberber returns to his native country during the repressive totalitarian regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu and the recognition of his own displacement and powerlessness at the dissolution of his people's humanity and social values. After several years spent studying medicine in Germany, he finds the country of his youth replaced by turmoil. His dream of using his craft to improve the health of Ethiopians is squashed by a military junta that uses scientists for its own political ends. Seeking the comfort of his countryside home, Anberber finds no refuge from violence. The solace that the memories of his youth provide is quickly replaced by the competing forces of military and rebelling factions. Anberber needs to decide whether he wants to bear the strain or piece together a life from the fragments that lie around him.
A documentary on the Wilmington 10, 9 afro-Americans and 1 white woman who were unjustly imprisoned.
In the midst of the Black consciousness movement, a basketball player imagines his profession to that of a gladiator. After a series of reflections including his upbringing as a foster child of White Americans, he returns to his origins.
Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.
In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.
Also Directed by Alexey German Jr.
Russia 2017. The world could be on the verge of a great war. People are anxious that things could fall apart. Evolving around an unfinished building, a diverse group of outsiders struggle to find their place in this rapidly changing society, making up the mosaic of existence that is life itself…
A fat middle-aged man in German officer's uniform gets off a train somewhere in Russia in winter. He is a doctor who has just been called up we learn eventually. This is the end of the line- the Germans are about to retreat. He goes to a hospital which is being evacuated and is thrown out. Kicked out he wanders with another conscript- a failed actor turned postman. The postman is deafened by a shell explosion. They meet their Russian equivalents, others as bad at killing as they are, while other Russians and Germans kill one another around them.
In 1961, a Soviet medical officer is conflicted about his position overseeing the health of future cosmonauts.
Follows a Russian professor who takes to social media to criticize his city's administration. He soon finds himself accused of embezzlement and placed under house arrest.
Five short love stories, which become a statement of the directors about love. A shoemaker, a reporter, a pavement hooker-in, a psychiatric patient and a young man released from prison are the main characters of the film, heroes in a time of no heroes. All of them have the important qualities of being openhearted and not afraid of loving.
Military drama about the first detachment of female fighters who found themselves at the front during the Great Patriotic War.
A university teacher in a small town is fighting for justice. He enters into a struggle for his ideals, his name, and sometimes for existence.
Dovlatov charts six days in the life of brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky while watching his artist friends get crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.
This film is a very short story about a former rescue worker returning from Tokyo – a man who is quite successful in his everyday life, and who, after hearing about another earthquake in Japan, dropped everything and went there to help. He is flying back home in an almost empty plane. Indeed, many regular flights have been canceled, and the ones that are still operated do not sell out. He is flying back with a very elderly Japanese man he had just saved – the man is now all alone in the world, his family had died. And the two men somehow clicked. Perhaps because our main character is also lonely. Also flying with them on the plane are those who are no longer here.Those who did not survive the disaster. Together with the characters, their past moves through space – their memories, their world. The world that is no less, but perhaps even more important for them than the reality.
Garpastum is a Latin word meaning ball game. Set in 1914 in St. Petersburg, the brothers Andrey and Nikolai are passionate about the matches they play on the streets. They hatch a scheme to buy a playing field. But World War I has already begun and soon their lives and dreams will be shattered.
Also Directed by Amir Naderi
Shuji is an uncompromising young filmmaker at odds with Japanese society. One day he learns that his loan shark brother, who had helped to finance his films, has been executed by his own yakuza gang for failing to repay his debts. Described as a love poem to Japanese films of the past, as well as a protest at the present, CUT is an exploration of one man’s obsessive relationship with cinema.
The film takes place away from the glittering strip of mega casinos, but the greed of Sin City is just as pervasive on the desert outskirts. This is where a happy family learns of a forgotten fortune that may be buried beneath their home. Their lives are turned upside down. A sophisticated study of just how far people are able and willing to go if faced with the tempting prospect of easily acquired wealth.
The film portrays the search by an 11-year old deaf and mute boy for an audio-cassette his mother recorded shortly before her death.
Amiro is a young boy who has lost his home during the war. He spends his days by working odd jobs, until he realizes that the only way that he can realize his dreams is by enrolling in school. In school, he has conflict with other students. Finally there is a competition to see who can say the whole alphabet in one breath.
An Iranian adventure film
An unfinished short film by Amir Naderi
The film is a collection of one-minute short films created by 60 filmmakers from around the world on the theme of the death of cinema.
Three NYC stories at a climax. Stories about breaking up, losing, leaving, giving away... the things or people you love, you live with, you depend on, which formed your past... The stories are about how difficult this is, how terrifying and how frightening. Yet, you HAVE to do what you have to do. The three girls are met at the turning point of their lives. The film is wonderful written, with few words and a great, exciting pace (though it takes its time and lot of it). Stop: there may be a lot of words, sometimes, but what's important is between-the-lines. The performances are marvellous. Style and location (all shot "on location") remind of this specific independent NYC style of Jarmusch, Poe, Seidelman, Silver, etc.
A young teenager returns home after an absence to find his village in Iran deserted because of an incredibly severe drought. He begins a search to find his family, traveling through an amazingly bleak and desolate landscape. Primarily an essay on the issue of humans vs. nature, the film is of interest for technical and cultural reasons.
Naderi's second film is set in the slums of Tehran. Hanging out in a pool hall, Ali Khoshdast becomes involved in a brawl with three brothers, and accidently kills one of them. He runs for his life, eventually taking refuge in the home of a young woman. The victim's brothers continue the chase, and finally close in on him. Following the murder, streets, alleys and houses that were all part of Ali's everyday world suddenly become dangerous and hostile. Although in many ways a classic tale of revenge, Naderi uses this story to imply that an underlying violence pervades society, ready to burst forth with or without justification.
Also Directed by Tariq Teguia
Algeria seen as a constant construction site. The eye moves through the chaos of the Algerian architecture, where most of the buildings are left incomplete. This is an essay on photography and video, but also on graphics and music.
Through the maze of alleys that is the city of Algiers and its surroundings, a blocked society, closed in on itself even where part of the word becomes the only space of individual freedom.
Ibn Battuta works as a journalist for an Algerian daily newspaper. While covering community clashes in Southern Algeria, he finds himself incidentally picking up the trail of long forgotten uprisings against the Abbasid Caliphate, back in 8th-9th century Iraq. For the purpose of his investigation he goes to Beirut, a city that used to embody the hopes and struggles of the Arab World...
Where are you, Tariq Teguia? is part of the series of short films commissioned by the Centre Pompidou, which asks invited filmmakers to create a free-form film to answer this question about the future, its desires, its projects! Where are you now, Tariq Teguia? is less a self-portrait - from Thessaloniki to Algiers, Lisbon or Beirut - than an attempt to escape it.
For more than ten years a "slow war" has been going on in Algeria: a war without battlefields but with more than 100,000 people killed. It is this wilderness that Zina and Kamel = a young couple bewildered and merry, gloomy and undisturbed - want to traverse one last time, before leaving for somewhere else.
Ibn Battuta works as a journalist for an Algerian daily newspaper. While covering community clashes in Southern Algeria, he finds himself incidentally picking up the trail of long forgotten uprisings against the Abbasid Caliphate, back in 8th-9th century Iraq. For the purpose of his investigation he goes to Beirut, a city that used to embody the hopes and struggles of the Arab World...
Algerian filmmaker Tariq Teguia wrote and directed this impressionistic look at a man whose life takes an unexpected turn far away from home. Malek (Abdelkader Affak) is a surveyor from Algeria who is semi-retired, but at the urging of a friend he takes an assignment in Oran. The region in question was the site of frequent battles during Oran's civil war, and an earlier survey that would make it possible to bring electrical utilities to the area was cut short by the fighting. While the zone is still unstable, Malek sets out to complete charting the area, and finds the locals regard him with suspicion and hostility. However, not everyone is disrespectful, and he discovers a young woman (Ines Rose Djakou) who is attracted to him, which leads him to consider abandoning his old life to run away with her. Inland was an official selection at the 2008 Venice Film Festival.
Also Directed by Edgar Reitz
Lulu, the daughter of musician Hermann Simon, is looking for something she feels is missing from her life. She delves into the past and is transported to the lives of her ancestors via dreamlike sequences that show the hopes and realities of her female relations over the course of an entire century. Heimat Fragments is an intoxicating trip into the lives of venerable characters from different periods in Lulu's family history, from long-forgotten scenes of war to every day family life on the farm. This gripping film shows fragments of the lives that shaped her own. Her gaze into the past does not simply signal the end of her youth, it means the beginning of a newly gained freedom.
Combining fictional and documentary modes, Kluge's In Danger and Dire Distress... takes a critical stance toward Frankfurt's public sphere and urban redevelopment. Despite the serious formal and political concerns of the film, Kluge's heightened sense of the absurd safeguards a reserve of utopian optimism.
A short by Alexander Kluge.
Follow-up to the TV trilogy "Heimat", this time for cinemas, set again in the fictional village Schabbach in the Hunsrück region of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Eleven-year old Jason and his companions, including Hercules and Orpheus, go with the ship "Argo" in the search for the Golden Fleece. With wit and cunning to overcome various obstacles until they reach the destination of their fantastic journey. The experiment is not only due to the popularization or naive glorification of a myth, but the search space occupied by fact that the heroes of antiquity were actually very young.
Two women during WW2 living in a Hunsrück village embark on a trip to Vienna.
Short by Edgar Reitz.
Documentary short by Edgar Reitz.
A meditation on the first 100 years of German cinema, featuring some of its greatest directors.
Also Directed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson
A response to Yoko Ono's Film Script No. 4 “ASK THE AUDIENCE TO STARE AT THE SCREEN UNTIL IT BECOMES BLACK.” I decided to assemble material shot in Cambodia in 2013 during the Cambodia King-Father Norodom Sihanouk’s funeral- a week long period of national mourning in which millions of Cambodians swarmed to Phnom Penh to grieve for the loss of their beloved leader. The profoundly overwhelming nature of this mass grieving seemed to resonate with the notion of an audience literally collectively willing an image out of existence. I chose to read the action of the screen turning black as being due to the audiences collective will rather than something imposed on an audience by the filmmaker/artist.
Charles is a portrait of a middle-aged man I met outside a 7/11 late one night on the outskirts of Oklahoma City in 2015. Charles had been homeless for some years, estranged from his family because of his schizophrenia, and was living by a pond at the back of the convenience store. We instantly formed a very intimate connection due to his gentle and deeply compassionate outlook on life. He told me beautiful stories about how he would talk to the trees and clouds before going to sleep each evening, and his plans to visit his daughter in Memphis before the end of the year. We ate some dinner together by his pond before shooting this portrait at about 3am.
A new moving image work by Amiel Courtin-Wilson in response to Pierre Guyotat's text EDEN EDEN EDEN.
In the American South, two lovers forge an all-consuming love as their physical and spiritual worlds are pushed to the limits of time and space. CARNATION is an impressionistic portrait of love and the ways in which we attempt to transcend our mortality.
Shot in three days in January 2016, the film captures the legendary jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and Japanese dancer-choreographer Tanaka Min in a delicate interaction. An impressionistic, extremely intimate portrait of the unspoken dynamics between two masters who have been collaborating for over thirty years.
You there. It's late. Imagine yourself with the lid coming down. The hymns and requiems. The sense of movement as you're borne along to the next place.
Bob has lived fearlessly – he snuck off to Woodstock at 15, hung out with Blondie and the Sex Pistols and ended up designing bathrooms for Elton John, Janet Jackson and Versace. But when we meet him, Bob is being cared for by one of his sons. Trapped i n a world of pain and unrelenting movement, he has decided to utilise the Death with Dignity law. Courtin Wilson’s camera stays unflinchingly close on the anger, sadness and joy of Bob’s last seven days while he continues to rail against his disease and says goodbye to family and friends.
Phirun is 19 years old and lives in Phnom Penh. One day he is accused of theft and involuntarily injures his employer. Phirun escapes and during his flight, he meets Sovanna; a powerful bond grows between the two of them, and develops into love. Amiel Courtin-Wilson is Australian, and made his debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000 with Chasing Buddha; since then he has made many films, screened at the major film festivals. In 2011 he directed Hail, presented at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in the Orizzonti section. Michael Cody, producer, director and screenwriter, has often collaborated with Courtin-Wilson and now they are back together with Ruin.
Charming, intelligent and iconoclastic, Ben Lee is an Australian singer-songwriter whose creative growth since his early adolescence has undergone almost relentless media scrutiny. This is a playful yet deeply intimate portrait of Lee, exploring his meteoric rise to pop stardom and the issues of celebrity and spirituality that arise when launched into the spotlight.
Provocative, funny and profoundly moving, Bastardy is the inspirational story of a self proclaimed Robin Hood of the streets. For Forty years and with infectious humour and optimism, Jack Charles has juggled a life of crime with another successful career- acting
Also Directed by Yonfan
The story takes place in a beautiful pavilion in 1930's Suzhou. Jade is a famous songstress courtesan, marrying into the noble house. She develops a dubious relationship with a female cousin of the family and also being admired secretly by her butler. LAN, the cousin, is a modern woman who wants to be independent and serves her country, but when she meets the charismatic Shing, an official from the North, all her plans go astray. These two women's love bears no fruit with their men and in the end they have only each other to lean on.
A shameful period in Taiwanese history provides the backdrop for this emotional drama from writer and director Yonfan (aka Yang Fan). In 1949, in the wake of the 228 Incident (in which anti-government protesters launched a rebellion that was violently put down by authorities), Taiwan came under martial law, and through much of the 1950s brutal reprisals against suspected communists were commonplace. During the years of the "White Terror," thousand of supposed dissidents were killed, imprisoned or simply disappeared at the hands of the military police.
Three directors deliver three stories about the love of in the modern world.
Miss Bowie is more or less happily raking in the cash until her life is complicated by the sudden reappearance, after 20 years, of her first (and presumably true) love. To this is added Miss Bowie's annoying teenage niece and a strange disease.
Photographer/filmmaker Yon Fan (Bishonen, Peony Pavilion) trains his celebrated eye on five disparate individuals in his controversial erotic drama Colour Blossoms. Teresa Cheung stars as a real estate agent drawn into a torrid - and sadomasochistic - relationship with a morose, stunningly beautiful Japanese photographer played by male model Sho. The two cavort in a luxurious apartment owned by an elegant upper-crust Japanese lady (Japanese diva Matsusaka Keiko), crossing paths with an infatuated policeman (Carl Ng), a mysterious Korean woman (Korean transsexual Ha Ri Su), and an increasingly tangled web of violence, criss-crossing passions, and lurid, unchecked desires. Prepare to immerse yourself in Yon Fan's controversial and delirious cinematic vision Colour Blossoms!
A documentary on the legacy of China’s traditional kunqu opera, BREAKING THE WILLOW tells the story of two Chinese women of different dynasty and society, and their personal link to a bejeweled Phoenix Tierra. Cui, a woman of humble background dreams her husband to gain her the Phoenix Tierra but when the dream comes true, it turns out to be too late. Hsiao Yu, a beautiful songstress from a royal decent of the past dynasty, meets the First Scholar and falls in love. The day after their wedding, the husband is called for the frontier. The fallen Princess wears the Phoenix Tierra to bid him farewell with poets.
Stephen Fung and Daniel Wu play a male prostitute and policeman who fall in love with tragic consequences. Partly inspired by a notorious real-life scandal in which porn photos of Hong Kong policemen - in (and out of) uniform - were found in the home of a wealthy member of the city's elite society.
Though the title may suggest a straightforward romance, Yonfan’s artfully directed melodrama is actually a nuanced tale of friendship. The movie is firmly grounded in the realities of Hong Kong - the stock market crash of 1987 and the Sino-British negotiations over the colony's future.
Set in Hong Kong in 1967 — a time of complex politics when it was still a British colony — No. 7 Cherry Lane revolves around a love triangle between a university student, a single mother and her teenage daughter.
Rose (Maggie Cheung) and her big brother Charles (Chow Yun-fat) live a fairy-tale existence in their seaside villa. Rose is young, beautiful, and spoiled - in a word, irresistible. Disappointed in love, she moves to Paris. When Charles dies suddenly, she rushes back to Hong Kong to take ocer the family estate. Fate intervenes when she meets Ka-ming (also played by Chow Yun-fat), who is the exact image of her late brother. The two fall in love, but their romance is in the hands of a not always benevolent fate.
Also Directed by Samuel Maoz
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.
Plot unknown.
During breaktime, Dara and Nader have a fierce argument about a torn exercise book that the former has given back to the latter. There are two possible outcomes, which the film shows one after the other. One is that Dara wants to get his own back, and the two boys start a violent fight; the other is that they work together to mend the exercise book with a little glue.
Also Directed by Davide Ferrario
Domenico, a bank robber, and Tommaso, the hostage, escape to the south of Italy meeting a gay policeman.
A prison-set musical about a female theater director who sets up a reinterpretation of the Crucifixion.
The magical Mole Antonelliana (the cavernous Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy) is the setting for a very unlikely love story. One fateful evening the museum's timid night watchman, comes to the aid of an enchanting young fast-food cook on the run from the police. The museum's dreamy kingdom of silent movie characters becomes a sanctuary for her as she awaits rescue by her devilish boyfriend.
Walter hasn't got a job, a girlfriend or any clear convictions. He rejects conventional values, notably his father's submissive acceptance of a life working in a factory as well as a social life. An on-and-off philosophy student, he'd like to be a committed nihilist but is too insecure.
Nina is a young and very independent porno actress. She doesn't need the help of any agent or manager. She has a daughter and a lesbian relationship with Cristiana, a porno editor. Following a usual medical check she discovers she has a cancer. Her life is completely different now. Nina decides to visit her father. Also the real love finds now space in her heart. In fact at the hospital, she knows Flavio, a patient following her same therapies. Nevertheless their liaison Nina still continues to act in porn movies. But for one of them there won't be a future
Also Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Two unlikely hero gunslingers are hired by a 15-year-old girl named Magic Child to kill the monster that lives in ice caves under the basement of a house inhabited by a young woman named Miss Hawkline.
A music video starring Despina Vandi.
A man pursues a relationship with his estranged daughter while a supernatural force pursues him
A nurse, a paramedic, a gymnast and her coach offer a service for hire wherein they stand in for dead people by appointment, hired by relatives, friends or colleagues of the deceased, to assist with the grieving process.
A short film made for "Venezia 70 - Future Reloaded."
A video clip of the song "A soldier on a train" which was first released in 1998 with the album "The game of love" with lyrics and music by Charoula.
England, early 18th century. The close relationship between Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill is threatened by the arrival of Sarah's cousin, Abigail Hill, resulting in a bitter rivalry between the two cousins to be the Queen's favourite.
The bizarre life of a female Frankenstein who is resuscitated after a fetus’ brain is placed in her skull. Ostensibly the memoirs of late-19th-century Glasgow physician Archibald McCandless, the narrative follows the bizarre life of oversexed, volatile Bella Baxter, an emancipated woman and a female Frankenstein. Bella is not her real name; as Victorian Blessington, she drowned herself to escape her abusive husband, but a surgeon removed the brain from the fetus she was carrying and placed it in her skull, resucitating her. The revived Bella has the mental age of a child. Engaged to marry McCandless, she chloroforms him and runs off with a shady lawyer who takes her on a whirlwind adventure, hopping from Alexandria to Odessa to a Parisian brothel. As her brain matures, Bella develops a social conscience, but her rescheduled nuptials to Archie are cut short when she is recognized as Victoria by her lawful husband, Gen. Sir Aubrey Blessington.
A music video for the band Leons of Athens directed by the enigmatic Yorgos Lanthimos.
My Best Friend is the outrageous story of two men, friends since childhood, who have spent their lives tormenting one another. It is only when Constantinos discovers Alekos in bed with his wife that their friendship and their respective marriages finally collapse into a death spiral of sex, deceit and irrepressible humor. As events unfold another deception, one concealed by both men's wives, opens the door to incredible erotic intrigue. Antonis Kafetzopoulos delivers a virtuoso performance in this surrealistic comedy about lies, friendship, love and deadlock
Also Directed by Giuseppe Piccioni
The story of a teacher and his students, set in an Italian high school.
The rumpled owner of a dry-cleaning firm joins forces with a nun to care for an abandoned baby.
Guido, an acclaimed author, leads an idyllic life with his beautiful wife and teenage daughter. But despite his seemingly perfect existence, Guido's restless search for inspiration leads him into the arms of Giulia, a charming and mysterious swim instructor, who is hiding a secret from her past.
A relationship develops between seasoned actor Stefano and his young, ambitious co-star, Laura, when they are cast as the two leads in a film. Stefano must deal with his mounting jealousy when Laura's career begins to take off.
Also Directed by Semih Kaplanoğlu
The global corporations have established cities and agricultural zones in areas where the climate is relatively good. These cities are populated by the elites, while the immigrant masses struggle with hunger and epidemics. For unknown reasons, the city’s agricultural plantations have been hit by a genetic crisis - and, as a result, by massive crop failure. Professor Erol Erin, a seed genetics specialist learns of Cemil Akman, a fellow scientist. Apparently, Cemil wrote a thesis about the recurrent crisis affecting genetically modified seeds - but the work was banned by the corporation..
Asli, a young mother who is trying to find a nanny to get back to work, finally meets young Gulnihal. Gulnihal is also a mother. With Gulnihal coming into her life, Asli faces her secrets which she has been avoiding herself.
Zeynep, Tülin Özen works in a hotel as a housekeeper. But she suffers hell on earth because of her father's behavior. She only talks to Mustafa, 'Engin Dogan' who works in the same hotel and he is interested in Zeynep. She is not interested in Mustafa who is younger than Zeynep, but she is not indifferent to him. While Zeynep is trying to make a bonfire of bad situation, Selçuk, Budak Akalin who lives on the other side of city is a voice technician. He feels guilty after his wife's death. The suitcase which has his wife's dresses changes the Zeynep's destiny.
Poet Yusuf (35-38) returns to his childhood hometown, which he hadn't visited for years, upon his mother's death. He is faced with a neglected, crumbling house. Ayla, a young girl (17-19) awaits him there. Yusuf has been unaware of the existence of this distant relation who had been living with his mother for five years; He stays by his dead mother's bedside for a while on the morning of his return...
In the remote and undeveloped eastern Black Sea region, a six-year-old boy (Yusuf) wanders through the woods searching for his lost father, trying to make sense of his life.His father is a beekeeper whose bees have disappeared unexpectedly, threatening his livelihood. A bizarre accident kills the father.There is little dialogue or music in the film. The three main characters (Yusuf and his parents) are all fairly taciturn, and the soundtrack is filled out with the sounds of the forest and the creatures that live there.The environment is a recurring theme.
A high school graduate, Yusuf could not pass the university entrance exam. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are being printed in various obscure literary journals. But neither these poems, nor the rapidly falling price of the milk they sell, are being of any benefit to Yusuf and Zehra's lives. When Yusuf finds out about Zehra's secret affair with the town's stationmaster he gets disconcerted. Will he find the way to cope with his anxiety for the unknown future, the rapid change that he is going through and the pain of taking a step into adulthood and leaving his youth behind
After several years of numbly mourning his parents death, 26 year old Selim takes a chance on the US lottery for passports and wins. He decides to sell the family olive grove to raise enough money to live in Manhattan and to break all roots to Turkey, leaving his girlfriend behind. When Selim's aged grand uncle, Nasuhi returns from Russia after 58 years he asks Selim to visit with him the olive grove of his youth. Before they depart, Nasuhi finds a beaten Russian girl, Olga who was robbed when she tried to sell herself to raise money to continue her own search for her sea faring father.
Also Directed by Tobias Lindholm
Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in Helmand, Afghanistan. Meanwhile back in Denmark, with a husband at war and three children missing their father, everyday life is a struggle for Claus' wife Maria. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy Taliban crossfire. In order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that ultimately sees him return to Denmark accused of a war crime.
Tensions are high after a Danish freighter is captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, leading to weeks of high-stakes negotiations – and an escalating potential for explosive violence.
The R of the title stands for the young protagonist, Rune, fearlessly played by Pilou Asbæk. Imprisoned for violent assault, he's a cocky, good-looking young man placed in the hardcore ward, where his survival depends on quickly learning the prison's parallel world of rules, honor, and obligations. R also stands for Rachid, a young Muslim prisoner who becomes Rune's friend and accomplice, defying the rigid racial stratifications among the inmates.
An infamous caregiver is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients.
Set in the late 1970s, two FBI agents are tasked with interviewing serial killers to solve open cases.
Also Directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko
Mischa, a mute boy, sets out on a surrealistic journey together with his father and two men. Their means of transportation is an old Soviet locomotive, loaded with stolen coal. The travellers intend to sell off the loot on their way through the borderless steppes of inner Russia. As a parallel to the main plot, sequences of a mysterious travelling circus keep reappearing in a very suggestive way. Many of the odd artists at the circus are people that the four protagonists encounter in the wilderness along the overgrown railway. All through the movie there is a sensation of magic crossed with pure realism, stressed by the crackling communistic infrastructure and a twisted sense of humor. The border between reality and fantasy is very subtle here. The Railway is a story about strong family ties, but also an ambitious interpretation of the clash between the Russia of old and new. One could call it the rebirth of a long forgotten genre: the Russian wonder story.
Documentary comedy about how the movie was filmed on the provincial studio in the mid-nineties.
The film is about the relations between the inhabitants of Russia and the Caucasus, and about their influence on each other. Young Georgian Georgi Iobadze tells the audience the story of the Vainakhs (a group of peoples of the North Caucasus and Georgia) in the period from 1813 to 1913.
In spring 1938 in the mountains in the north of Chile a fiery UFO, later named "Chilean Sphere ", fell down. The investigation of this episode, made by a film crew, has led to a sensational discovery. It appeared that before the Second World War (in the thirties) in the USSR a secret space program had been developed. The Soviet scientists and military authorities managed to launch the first spacecraft 23 years prior to Jury Gagarin's flight! "The First on the Moon" tells about everyday life, heroic deeds and tragedy of the first group of the Soviet cosmonauts. It is the first Russian film shot in a very rare genre 'mockumentary' or 'documentary fiction'.
A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
A stark experiment by director A. Fedorchenko and a new form of cinema, which takes the spectator into the recollections of the protagonist, along corridors of memory and through key events of Russian history from the Silver Age to WWII.
Created under a “manifesto” whose directives would make Lars von Trier shudder, this three-part film might look on paper like an exercise in forced hipness. Fortunately, its directors – Harmony Korine (USA), Alexsei Fedorchenko (Russia) and Jan Kwiecinski (Poland) – prove innovative and just insane enough to make The Fourth Dimension an exhilarating experiment.
Comedy drama about two friends who steal a car of coal and want to sell it, for which they carry coal on an old steam locomotive on an abandoned railway. Despite the fact of the crime, his goals seem to be good: one of the thieves is a school principal who wants to make repairs in the classrooms and buy computers, and the second is a driver who went on an adventure with his son, in the hope that the seven — year-old Bear will talk. They had to take the driver with them — an old one, like the engine itself. The railway, which has not been used for many years, becomes for this eccentric company a path from the past to a bright, possibly future.
Next July Altai will again drown in the sea of love for the famous countryman – Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. Altaians will celebrate his next birthday.
Five friends – a poet, an actor, a painter, an architect and a primitivist film director – are five red avant-garde artists who try to find the embodiment of their hopes and dreams in the young Soviet state. The Revolution is boiling up like a bottle with apple cider: winged service dogs and heart-shaped potatoes, dead Semashko, the People’s Commissar for Health, and cheerful angels, love for the Tsar and love for the young secretary Annushka, executions and pregnancies – everything is interlaced and inseparable!
Also Directed by Shirin Neshat
Roja is drawn from Neshat’s own recurring dreams, memories and desires. The work traces a young woman’s disquieting attempts to connect with American culture while reconciling her identification with her home country of Iran.
An intimate entrée into an Iranian woman’s private world. Here the renowned actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who like Neshat is from Iran, appears in a moment of solitude before a radio. In the film, she captivatingly sings a love poem by Rumi in the film, and this photograph is no less poignant, as she is captured within the beautiful and dramatic light that filters into her bare room.
On one wall, a singer delivers a passionate love song to a group of men. He is faced away from his audience, secure that his performance will be accepted and adored. On the opposite wall, a woman in a black chador stands silently throughout his song. Then something stunning happens…
Artist Shirin Neshat explains the film: “I was interested in how female singers are universally treated as objects of desire. At first, Cate looks gorgeous, but when she sings it’s a male’s voice. The audience heckles her, and she becomes confrontational. When the music comes back on, she does a seductive dance but her face is evil. For her final act of subversion, she takes off her hair and makeup and walks away. That part was Cate’s idea. Fuck the beauty.”
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.
Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat's video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who 'invade' the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.
In Sarah, 2016, it is a forest environment that becomes a site of haunting; mysterious and unknowable. The protagonist Sarah is played by Sara Issakharian, an Iranian-born artist.
A film within a film, "Looking for Oum Kulthum" is the plight of an Iranian woman artist/filmmaker living in exile, as she embarks on capturing the life and art of the legendary female singer of the Arab world, Oum Kulthum. Through her difficult journey, not unlike her heroine's, she has to face the struggles, sacrifices and the price that a woman has to pay if she dares to cross the lines of a conservative male dominated society.
Zarin is part of Neshat's full-length film Women Without Men, based on Shahrnoush Parsipour’s book about women’s lives after the 1953 CIA coup in Iran.
The Colony, which shares the screen and the character of Shirin Neshat's Land of Dreams, is about an immense research institute devoted to recording and archiving the dreams of the local population.
Also Directed by Júlio Bressane
The history of Brazilian popular music in the 20th Century, focusing specially on the life and works of intriguing singer Mário Reis, a loner who, with his special way of singing - whispering and softly saying the words - in a time when singers with potent voices ruled, was in a way a forerunner of Bossa Nova style.
In his film Rua Aperana 52 Júlio Bressane describes the invention of a landscape, the topology of a corner of Rio de Janeiro. The film consists of a series of photographs taken between 1909 and 1955 by, among others, Bressane's parents at and around the address used as a title. These are interlarded with scenes from films made between 1957 and 2005, bringing the total fictional time the film covers to almost a century; one hundred years in which the winding road featured in almost every shot structures the new landscape behind the Aperana, which means 'wrong road'. Rua Aperana 52 is autobiographical, as it is a landscape from Bressane's youth, but it is also not so; it is more a multi-subjective mythology of a place seen through all those films and photographs. Bressane refers to his editing as an intuitive form of thinking aimed at evoking moods which make the viewer the new witness of the fictional landscape. A fiction about a fiction,
An essay around the streets, as an homage to Fernando Pessoa
Sentimental Education centers on the unique relationship between Áurea, a lonely 40 year old teacher, and a young man she has just met by chance – one of these encounters which mythology and literature are full of. A delicate soul who finds itself attracted to a beauty that seems to demand, disturb and move her. That shakes her up entirely. During the days following their first conversation, she will expose all her feelings through classes in which he will let himself be carried away. Until an unusual episode from the past is revealed and changes everything.
The great battles are the backdrop for the unfolding of the Egyptian Queen's personal life. The strategy of Cleopatra is to seduce the Roman General Julius Caesar and Mark Antony to protect their civilization.
Brazilian director Julio Bressane directs this religious biography on the life and work of Saint Jerome, the monk who first translated the Bible into Latin. Set both in the desert and in the posh confines of the Vatican, Jerome (Everaldo Pontes) agonizes over which Latin word would best fit its Hebrew counterpart. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
A delicate and tenacious writer, widowed three years ago, engages in frequent conversations with a parrot. However, she’s always observed by a large portion of raw meat.
In September 2007 Júlio Bressane goes to Ferrara. In the cemetery of the Italian city he ends up making two movies.
A curious couple, whose existence takes place where art arises along a singular metaphysical desire. They search for it through repeated and varied representations, in a setting of light where hope and desperation blend together.
A cinematographic essay, without dialogues, about the months Nietszche spent in Turin, Italy, with narration quoted by his original writings.
Also Directed by Pietro Marcello
For the 90th anniversary of the Istituto Luce, ten new-generation filmmakers were invited to dig into the archives of the famous institute. Pietro Marcello and Sara Fgaier decided to pay tribute to the rural world of this “lost and beautiful” Italy, accompanying their images with excerpts from Carlo Levi’s book, Un volto che ci somiglia (1960).
The Istituto Luce turned ninety in 2014, its decades-long history intertwined with that of Italy itself, through cinema and that unique treasure trove of images known to all as the Luce Archives. To celebrate its anniversary, some of the most acclaimed rising filmmakers in Italy were invited to make a small film, with each director selecting ten minutes of footage from the archives, out of the thousands of hours of footage to be found there. The result is an album full of different narratives.
Pietro Marcello directs this genre-defying Italian docudrama that follows mustachioed ex-con Enzo as he returns to Genoa after a long stint in prison, only to find that the city he once loved has changed almost beyond recognition. But as he combs the seaside town for hints of his past, he finds solace in the arms of Mary, his faithful lover and a transsexual who embodies the mysterious allure of Genoa itself. Mary Monaco and Vincenzo Motta star.
Italian-French historical romance drama film loosely based on the 1909 novel of the same name by Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer.
A portrait of Italy observed through the eyes of teenagers who talk about the places they live in and imagine themselves, torn between the opportunities that surround them, the dream of what they want to become, the fear of failing, the trials they hope to overcome.
A documentary about the Armenian avant-garde filmmaker, Artavazd Peleshian.
A journey through Italian landscapes as seen through the windows of a long-distance express train.
Also Directed by Hong Sang-soo
Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married professor, who Mi-Sook once dated herself. The level of social embarrassment goes off the scale. In Naomi Kawase’s Koma (Japan, 34min), Kang Jun-Il travels to a village in rural Japan to honour his grandfather’s dying wish by returning a Buddhist scroll to its ancestral home. Amid ancient superstitions, a new relationship forms. And in Lav Diaz’ Butterflies Have No Memories (Philippines, 42min) ‘homecoming queen’ Carol returns to the economically depressed former mining town she came from – and becomes the target of an absurd kidnapping plot hatched by resentful locals. Serving as his own writer, cameraman and editor, Diaz casts the film entirely from members of his crew and delivers a well-seasoned mix of social realism and fantasy. —bfi
Sang-Joon is a professor in the film department at a provincial university. He goes to Seoul to meet his senior, Young-Ho, who works as a film critic. Sang-Joon stays in a northern village in Seoul for 3 days.
A love story between a middle aged professor, a young female student who prepares a movie and a student/filmmaker who drinks too much.
Haewon, a college student, wants to end her secret affair with her professor, Seongjun. Feeling depressed after bidding farewell to her mother who is set to immigrate to Canada the next day, Haewon seeks out Seongjun again after a long time. That day, they run into her classmates at a restaurant and their relationship gets revealed. Haewon gets more agitated and Seongjun makes an extreme suggestion to run away together… Haewon dreams often. Her dreams will be compared to her waking life, but none can be denied as being a part of her life.
While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul. They make friendly conversation, as always, but there are different currents flowing independently of each other, both above and below the surface.
An actress wanders around a seaside town, pondering her relationship with a married man.
A three-tiered story centered on a trio of French tourists visiting the same seaside resort.
Actor Gyung-soo is passed over for a part and decides to leave Seoul and visit a friend. His friend tells him the legend of the "Turning Gate," which foreshadows future events. During his visit, Gyung-soo meets Myung-sook, a girl who quickly falls for him. After a night of passion, he boards the train back for Seoul and meets a married woman who claims to know him. Gyung-soo thinks he may be in love with her, but perhaps he's chosen the wrong woman.
New film from Hong Sang-soo.
Hong Sangsoo's short film made for the 59th edition of the New York Film Festival.
Also Directed by Frédéric Fonteyne
A prison guard is attracted to a woman at his weekly tango class. They meet again when she visits her husband in the prison where he works and he is drawn into her complicated romantic life. Meanwhile the prisoners are learning the tango.
Short film.
Short film.
During a scorching summer, Axelle, Conso and Dominique cross every day the Franco-Belgian border to prostitute themselves in Belgium to continue living in Roubaix.
Gilles' wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she weeps. She decides on a strategy to keep him. Will she succeed?
Max is a Sicilian living in Brussels who makes a living as a hairdresser. His flourishing business goes bankrupt when he gets hairdresser's eczema overnight. He loses his customers and his wife. What is more, he is in trouble with the law. At the police station, he encounters heavyweight Bobo who asks him for all his money. When Max refuses, Bobo gets the impression that he must be tough. In reality, he just wants to be left alone. In his good old days, Max never cared for anyone, so now there is no one he can turn to. Bobo, who spent all his life in foster homes and youth centers, seems to be the only one to care for him. Together they devise a plan to find some quick money. Bobo's idea is to rob a jewelry store.
A man and a woman meet to fulfill her sexual fantasy.
(no summary right now)
Also Directed by Pablo Larraín
In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the ‘No’ vote persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra, to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and while under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.
A man, who lives in a nursing home, video conferences a former girlfriend from decades ago and professes his never-ending love for her.
A couple deals with the aftermath of an adoption that goes awry as their household falls apart.
A black comedy picturing bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire.
In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.
It’s 1948 and the Cold War has arrived in Chile. In the Congress, prominent Communist Senator and popular poet Pablo Neruda accuses the government of betraying the Party and is stripped of his parliamentary immunity by President González Videla. The Chief of Investigative Police instructs inspector Óscar Peluchonneau to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to escape from the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril, but they are forced to go underground.
A Bangladeshi Air Force officer looking to make his way in the United States is shot by an American terrorist out to kill Muslims in the aftermath of September 11th.
Covers a critical weekend in the early ‘90s, when Princess Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn’t working, and that she needed to veer from a path that put her in line to one day be queen.
The tumultuous, beautiful and tragic life story of American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas, who was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century.
Could a brilliant composer's music actually be killing his loved ones? Eliseo can't help but believe it when his younger sister dies tragically and then his pianist Georgina suddenly dies on the piano. Completely traumatized, Eliseo is taken to a mental hospital where he can find escape only through music.
Also Directed by Antonio Capuano
A despairing Rosario has just murdered his wife and daughter at the dinner table on New Year's Eve. Somehow, Vito quietly convinces his father to drop the gun, spare their lives and call the police. Placed in the custody of sexually abusive relatives, Vito is left free to roam the trash-strewn back streets of Naples where he and his friends engage in drug abuse, prostitution and petty crime.
Italian filmmaker Antonio Capuano writes and directs the grueling gangster drama Luna Rossa (Red Moon). Aging Tony Cammarano (Italo Celoro) is the patriarch of an organized crime family, but his son Amerigo (Toni Servillo) runs most of his operations. Amerigo is a killer who invites his mistress, Rita (Lucia Ragni), to live in the family house. Meanwhile, his wife, Irene (Licia Maglietta), has an affair with mob henchman Egidio (Antonino Iuorio), who fancies the Cammarano's teenage daughter, Orsola (Antonia Truppo). This leaves Irene to eye her own son, Oreste (Domenico Balsamo), who has taken to self-mutilation. Luna Rossa won the Wella Prize at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.
A young priest crusades against organized crime in his Naples neighbourhood but falls in love with a 13-year old boy. It's the chance the gangsters were waiting for to get rid of the thorn in their side. Will they be able to force the boy to accuse the priest of sexual harassment and have his reputation destroyed?
An elderly man living by himself is haunted by memories related to the Holocaust.
Five Italian directors -- Pappi Corsicato, Antonietta DeLillo, Antonio Capuano, Stefano Incerti, Mario Martone -- contributed a quintet of short films depicting life in Naples under the shadow of the volcano for this anthology film of comedy, drama, surrealism, and political commentary on the Italian left. Shown at the 1997 Venice Film Festival.
A judge decides to take a difficult child, Mario (9 years old), from his family and entrusts him to a couple of unmarried forty-year-olds. For the three of them, living together is difficult and painful, since the couple and the child come from two separate realities. As relief from solitude and displacement, Mario creates his own world, where he meets Schad Sky, an imaginary playmate.
A collective film made of nine episodes characterized by a critical and pessimistic attitude towards the future of Italy in the case of the ascension of the center-right government of Berlusconi.
Also Directed by Benoît Jacquot
A twist of fate leaves a hapless accountant romantically torn between two sisters.
A girl from bourgeoisie discovers the pleasures of banditism, following her lover in his lifestyle.
This symbolic drama from director Benoit Jacques underscores the characters' human need for affection. Children steal lemons for the thrill, while women steal other women's men from them just to prove they can. Drug smuggling, clandestine love affairs, and two lovers involved with the production of Shakespeare's Othello carry on with their own off-stage tragedy.
A dedicated clarinetist receives a valuable violin and has a difficult time deciding what to do with it.
In Paris, Dominique, a middle-aged fashion professional, solicits the services of the handsome Quentin , a bisexual bartender and prostitute who is 15 years her junior. After they first sleep together, their business transaction becomes transformed into a passionate love affair. However, the couple's romance becomes an ugly power struggle when social class and age distinctions begin to bubble toward the surface.
Also Directed by Franco Maresco
In the Sicily of the late 1940s, two brother sculptors, tired of selling madonnas to the local churches, finally realize their dream, and set up a Sicilian production company, thanks to the help of a local bishop. They start producing one box-office failure Z-movie after the other, all with terribly bad local non-pros as actors. Covered in debts, they finally have their great chance, when a local nobleman obsessed by magic decides to invest all his wealth in the making of a movie about Cagliostro, just one year after Orson Welles' Black Magic (1949). They hire a famous American actor (Robert Englund) and start shooting "The Return of Cagliostro".
Franco scaldati - diede in 2013 - was one of the most important autors of italian theatre plays, Maresco describes his role in the cultural and social field. Through his opera we can observe Italy from another point of view.
Short 35mm experimental film featuring Sam Fuller.
A visit to the Rotoli cemetery in Palermo, while film director Carmelo Bene reads a fragment of Antonio Pizzuto's book "Signorina Rosina".
This film tells the story of three defeats: Berlusconi’s political and human defeat in his “twilight”, the one of Ciccio Mirra, Berlusconi’s unconditional supporter, deeply rooted in an ancient culture that dies hard, and the director’s artistic defeat in an Italy that recognised itself in this “Berlusconian culture” for a long time, and probably still does.
Ciprì and Maresco's delicious documentary portrays Sicilian super-agent Enzo Castagna, a man with some 20,000 extras on his books, who has worked with the likes of Loren, Pasolini, Rosi, Coppola and Cimino (indeed, virtually anyone who's ever chosen to film in Palermo). It's typically weird, witty and wonderful, partly due to its subject, a self-styled 'little big man' who consents to be described as 'almighty' and 'the greatest contributor to Italian cinema in the last 35 years'. The local favourite has also done time for bribery, but refuses to comment on Cosa Nostra. The film is as astonishing as its subject. Shot in luscious b/w, it's driven forward by an offscreen interrogator who alternates between ludicrously hyperbolic flattery and forthright questions about corruption and crime. It also serves as a study of the way ethics get abandoned in the unending pursuit of fame, wealth and self-esteem.
Also Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari
The new film by Athina Rachel Tsangari.
This short piece by Athina Rachel Tsangari, commissioned for the seventieth edition of the Venice Film Festival in 2013, draws on Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" and functions as a meditation on the state of cinema, depicting two film projectors contemplating the uncertainty of their future.
In the middle of the Aegean Sea, six men on a fishing trip on a luxury yacht decide to play a game. During this game, things will be compared. Things will be measured. Songs will be butchered, and blood will be tested. Friends will become rivals and rivals will become hungry. But at the end of the journey, when the game is over, the man who wins will be the best man. And he will wear on his smallest finger the victory ring: the Chevalier.
A great video directed by the award winning director Athina Rachel Tsangari and narrated by Willem Dafoe about the history and the importance of the Museum Benaki.
Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones. Produced by Strand Releasing and Connor Jessup.
A migrant cyborg (Lizzie Curry Martinez) wanders the globe recording her encounters,
Seven girls, a mansion perched on a Cycladic rock, a cycle of lessons on discipline, desire and demise-infinitely.
A documentary that takes a look at the production of BEFORE MIDNIGHT. As the film starts, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are sitting around as filming has just completed. From here we get some terrific stories as they talk about the characters as well as what they bring and take from them. We also get footage from the filming of the movie where we get to see how the actors and director work together to try and build up the scenes.
A surreal account of Lizzie as she struggles to make life fit.
Marina, 23, is growing up with her architect father in a prototype factory town by the sea. Finding the human species strange and repellent, she keeps her distance. Instead she chooses to observe it through the songs of Suicide, the mammal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, and the sexual-education lessons she receives from her only friend, Bella. A stranger comes to town and challenges her to a foosball duel, on her own table. Her father meanwhile ritualistically prepares for his exit from the 20th century, which he considers to be "overrated." Caught between the two men and her collaborator, Bella, Marina investigates the wondrous mystery of the human fauna.
Also Directed by Marlen Khutsiyev
Originally called World '68, later retitled The World of Today Romm’s film was conceived as an impassioned, large-scale essay on the origins of the 20th century and the subsequent reality the disappointed director felt slipping away from him. The film itself slipped away from him and was left unfinished at the time of his death. His younger colleagues, Marlen Khutsiev, Elem Klimov and German Lavrov, completed the film from the elements he left behind in addition to segments from Ordinary Fascism, closing the film with Romm’s ultimately optimistic outlook: "And still I believe that man is sensible..."
Three lifelong friends who return to Moscow after their military service and whose fathers have been killed in the war see their aspirations juxtaposed against everyday life in 1960s Soviet Union. They reflect on their possible futures and their place in society.
A woman is forced to examine the emptiness of her life in this stark drama from the Soviet Union. Lena (Yevgenya Uralova) is a woman in her late twenties who loves her boyfriend (Aleksandr Belyavsky) but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.
A young man is forced to spend a few days with his father in law...
At the end of the Second World War, Fedor is demobilized and returns home where he meets a homeless boy, small Fedor. They decide to live together. The adult works in the building trade and the boy goes to school and looks after the house. They get on very well until Natacha arrives in big Fedor's life. After marrying big Fedor, Natacha tries to win the child's love. But he remains hostile.
Having returned from the army, 20-year-old Sergei settles down at the thermal power station and merges into ordinary life. Every day he meets and spends time with childhood friends — the young family man Slava and the merry fellow Nikolai, and once at first sight he falls in love with a stranger on the bus. A lyrical story about a generation of young people entering adulthood, a reappraisal of values, life principles, traditions in culture and art.
Virtually unseen since its Soviet television broadcast in 1971, the film, Peter Rollberg writes, is “devoted to the anniversary of the Paris commune, mixing historical footage with images of present-day Paris.”
Fifty-year-old Vladimir Ivanovich Prokhorov, relieved of his worldly possessions, takes a journey back in time. Accompanied by a traveling companion barely half his age, he revisits the people and places of his youth and witnesses the dark forces that shaped the 20th century.
An idealistic, sophisticated young woman meets a rough-around-the-edges, blue collar man and rejects him, only to find out later that they are destined for true love together, despite the fact that he cannot now pass his certification test after she threw him out of her adult education class.
A few days after the unconditional surrender of German troops, a group of Soviet soldiers is billeted at a farmyard which the war somehow never seems to have reached. This apparently peaceful picture is eerily undermined when the Red Army soldiers are confronted with the full extent of Nazi terror.
Also Directed by Jan Cvitkovič
Adam creates Eve and puts her on his throne. A Child is about to be born.
In the city of Versopolis, people stop uttering the words that crawl out of their mouth, liberating instead the words lodged somewhere deep in their subconscious minds. The words that really mean something.
In a basement, a man built his masterpiece ...
A Man, a Woman and a Boy. Three people in a timeless landscape. They don't know each other, their cultural background is undefined. They try to survive, each on his/her own. Slowly they start to get in some contact which is utterly mistrusting and occasionally hostile, but through various different situations it gradually starts to develop into relationships.
Pero is a professional funeral speaker in a small Slovenian town. His unique gift is to make every funeral that extra bit special. Pero just can't help turning his eulogies into witty personal confessions that bring the grieving crowd to tears for all the wrong reasons.
The focus is on the disintegration of an idyllic relationship between parents, Marko and Dunja. This is due to a lack of respect, caused by loss of employment and a financial breakdown. In time, the parents are no longer able to bear their burden, which is thus increasingly weighing their children down. In Slovenia, the story from The Basics of Killing occurs on a daily basis, but it could happen anywhere. To those familiar with the phenomenon, the film will be a painful experience, to others, may it be a warning.
Three almost middle-aged men decide to open up a pizzeria in the neighbourhood of Šiška in Ljubljana.
Ivan is released a day early from a treatment programme for alcoholics due to a doctors' strike. He returns to his wife Sonja and his sixteen year old son Robi. The first afternoon he spends at home is very pleasant. The next morning Sonja sends Ivan to a shop to get bread and milk. On the way back Ivan runs into Armando, his high school classmate, and through their conversation at a bar, Ivan finds out that long before Sonja became his wife, Armando spent a night with her. Ivan has his first drop of the hard stuff...Kruh in mleko is a bitter-sweet tale of loneliness, estrangement and the glowing embers of love, where there once used to be a fire.
A wordless and virtually soundless but nonetheless exquisitely sensitive drama about an overweight butcher who lives alone and the strange fascination he develops for an attractive young woman he sees on his regular bus route. He takes tentative steps to approach her but though he receives an open, caring smile, fails to respond.
A woman who killed her man has served her sentence. She sails through town; she sails through scenes of life. A girl sees her, forgives her, and saves her. The woman has done her thing. The world finally embraces her again.
Also Directed by Teresa Villaverde
The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.
Part of the collective film Visions of Europe that celebrates the creation of European Union.
Several images follow one another to the work of António Pinho Vargas, Six Portraits of Pain, played in full.
This dark and intense drama follows the slow and painful destruction of a young, passive woman as she watches her family fall apart. Maria is the shy and dutiful daughter upon whose shoulders the family traumas have fallen. In addition to a regular job she cooks, cleans, and studies. Her parents offer no assistance as her father is blind, with a tendency towards violence when drinking. His wife, the focus of his violence is terribly unhappy. After a particularly brutal beating, Maria's brothers rise up against the father and end up leaving the home. It is up to Maria to try to bring the factions together. Maria's pressures increase after she calmly stabs her boss during an attempted rape, and then copes with her mother's suicide.
In Rio de Janeiro, people from the Mangueira neighbourhood follow the television broadcast on a big screen as the juries vote on each samba school. In 2019, Mangueira took to the Sambadrome a strong, bold samba of resistance to what’s taking place in Brazil right now. The film witnesses the tension while waiting for the final score, and the great joy of people from every generation when Mangueira wins and becomes champion of the 2019 Carnival.
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
Vera is a singer in her thirties; she is back in Lisbon for the final performance of her concert tour. The heat and beauty of Lisbon makes one want to be happy. Pablo, the companion she selected from among the many who answered her questionnaire, helps her through the sleepless nights. He has no family, but wishes he had. Vera concerns herself with the mysteries surrounding Pablo's life. Vera is not afraid of the night; she is not afraid of anything.
Three homeless teenage rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer.
On December 1, 2015, in front of the restaurant Le Petit Cambodje, officials from the Paris City Council collect the flowers paying tribute to the victims of the November 13 attack.
Also Directed by Krzysztof Zanussi
At the end of the 19th century, somewhere in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, a doctor administers a lethal overdose of ether to a young woman – the object of his desire. After getting away with his crime, he finds employment in a fortress, where he continues his experiments with ether to manage pain and manipulate human behaviour. Despite his evilness, it is not too late for his soul to be saved from eternal damnation…
A Polish ambassador (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz) finds his life falling into ruin following the death of his wife.
Henry Kesdi is a silenced classical composer and a survivor of the Holocaust. He is coaxed out from retirement by an inspired musicologist, Stefan, who convinces him to compose a complex symphony on his neglected piano. As a help Kesdi gets his new musical secretary. His loyal wife reluctantly accepts her as his young lover.
In this adaptation of an historical play by Pope John Paul II, painter Albert Chmielowski decides to devote his life to helping the homeless.
Collaborative film made in Denmark.
An idealistic scientist is encouraged by his wife to use his good looks to get ahead, but his new job carries with it temptations and traps.
Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi once more explores the dilemma of intellectualism at the expense of humanity in 1982's Imperative. The story concerns math professor Robert Powell, who feels that there is something lacking in his ever-so-precise life. What is missing is truth, specifically philosophical truth. Thus he philosophizes at great length, allowing director Zanussi plenty of room for didactic but little room for warmth. Leading ladies Brigette Fossey and Leslie Caron occasionally melt through the cold logic of Imperative.
In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.
Also Directed by Tusi Tamasese
The father of a deeply troubled household that endured tragedy both from without and within, seeks to reconcile with his youngest daughter by making a journey to both symbolically and culturally lay the family "ghosts" to rest.
The Orator (O Le Tulafale) is a contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness and love. Small in stature and humble, Saili lives a simple life with his beloved wife and daughter in an isolated, traditional village in the islands of Samoa. Forced to protect his land and family, Saili must face his fears and seek the right to speak up for those he loves.
Taro planter Lui's grief for his dead wife has infected his whole life. A chance meeting with a stranger, a widow bound in anger to the grave of her husband now drowning in their cyclone devastated village, inspires Lui to reach out to her. This releases him from his own pain and allows his wife to rest.
Also Directed by Wang Bing
The Ta'ang or Palaung people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous area between Myanmar's Kokang region and China's Yunnan province, have historically suffered many forced migrations due to war. When their survival is threatened again in 2015, thousands of them flee across the border. Filmmaker Wang Bing accompanies them and becomes a privileged witness to a human story that is both a modern reportage and a mythical epic.
About the Chinese drivers who transport coal from the coal fields to the buyers.
Happy Valley is a village in the mountains of north-western Yunnan Province, altitude 10,000 feet. A few dozen Han families live there, mainly from potatoes and livestock.
In a fast growing city of East China, migrants have been arriving and living for a dream of a better life. But what they find there is little opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. Xiao Min, Ling Ling and Lao Yeh are some of the characters of this bitter chronicle of today China.
Gao Ertai (1931) is an artist, teacher, philosopher who, in the 1950s, was imprisoned in the Jiabiangou Labour Camp. The film works as a diptych with Fengming, the confessional story of another victim of reprisals, and closes a vast film series on those who disappeared.
A powerful visual study of the site of the Jiabiangou forced labour camp in the Gobi desert.
Four years ago, Kingsley arrived from Nigeria in Guangzhou, China and shared a small room with other Africans in the basement of a commercial building. He converted this modest space into a barber’s shop. Kingsley is keen to start an import and export company and to register it officially in Guangzhou. He works every day until 11 pm then goes to sleep in a chair at McDonald’s. He must also send money to his wife, so despite all his efforts, he is still unable to put aside enough money to register his business. In mid-November 2019, he goes back to Lagos to renew his visa. There, he and his wife rent a small stall in the Ikotun Market in the suburbs. But business is hard. Early in 2020, Kingsley is due to head back to China to continue his quest, but with all travel blocked by the Covid-19 epidemic, he remains stuck in Nigeria. Meanwhile, in Guangzhou, the director meets Evelyn, a Nigerian woman, trying to survive with her 6-year-old daughter and with another one on the way.
Also Directed by Jean-Marie Straub
An alternate look at a part of Sicilia, perhaps left out for its more straightforward didactic quality. Interesting to again see the long gaps. Also note the extra use of close-up (for them) on the old woman.
Jean-Marie Straub’s new film closes the circle. The years 1954–2013 are displayed as representing a film produced in collaboration with Danièle Huillet. The two had met in Paris in 1954, around the year they came across the text by Georges Bernanos, to whom Straub has now dedicated a half-hour film. A man and a woman engaged in a dialogue, talking about their love, as if talking across an abyss. Then, in the last take, the two of them close together, motionless for a long time
Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time (40 years separate the various extracts that are going to be used, and what is to be filmed), blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature. (Arnaud Dommerc)
Joachim Gatti, is the grand-son of the director and filmmaker Armand Gatti. During a demonstration in Montreuil, he lost an eye, hit by a “flashball” fired from a policegun.
Inspired by Rossellini's Europa '51 Straub-Huillet made a film consisting of two pans of a street corner in Paris.
A story about the continuity and collapse of history, the power of suppression, and the terror of reconciliation; loyalty, treason and revenge. In a brave cinematic game, Heinrich Böll’s story Billiards at Half-Past Nine is split up into cracks, blocks, breaks and sudden turns, as the life story of a German family, covering numerous generations, is propelled forward.
The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi
A companion piece to the earlier film ‘The Death of Empedocles’, 'Black Sin' is an adaptation of the third version of Friedrich Hölderlin’s play ‘Der Tod Des Empedokles’.
Scene cut from Sicilia. Shows the sheer detail in their working out of the dialogue. Assymetrical framing to, oddly for them, draw attention. —endupatthemovies.blogspot.com
Fragment of last reel from "History Lessons" presented in an installation as a special event for the Venice Biennale Arte.
Also Directed by Celina Murga
Twenty-something Ana, now living in Buenos Aires, returns to her native city of Paraná. She meets old school mates, old friends, makes new ones, and starts to rethink her life, and perhaps change her future.
Argentina short film
Short movie about communications and our expectations.
Maria is a girl in her early teens whose family lives in an upscale gated suburb. Maria's parents are going out of town for a week, and rather than leave her with relatives or hire a babysitter, Maria is put in charge of looking after her little sister Sofia, with housekeeper Esther serving as a nominal adult authority figure, though for the most part she lets Maria and the others do what they please. With only their parents bedroom off-limits, Maria and Sofia have the run of the house, and soon they and their friends Facundo, Quique, Rodrigo and Timmy are spending their days exploring the place. As the kids begin creating their own rules to run counter to the ones their absent parents set down, Esther brings a young relative, Fernando, to play with them, and the privileged kids begin to get a notion of they ways of the outside world.
Student council elections are about to be held at a school in Parana, Argentina and the two main parties are putting the finishing touches to their campaigns. As they present their positions to the student body, all the elements of political grandstanding are present and correct: quibbling over slogans, circular rhetoric, the benefits of an attractive candidate and the inevitable final mudslinging.
Tensions rise when a doctor (Daniel Veronese) pressures his teenage son to follow in his footsteps.
Also Directed by Lluís Galter
In 2010 a delegation of Chinese architects travelled to Cadaqués, on the Costa Brava, to take notes for the large-scale replica of the town they were planned to build in Xiamen, on the southeast coast of China. Six years later, young entrepreneur Tingting sets off to spend the weekend in her flat in Kadakaisi, the Chinese Cadaqués. The film weaves between the original and replica, reality and dream, time and memory, through the landscapes of Cadaqués, Kadakaisi, Xiamen and Cap de Creus.
"Caracremada" ("Burnface" in Catalan), a nickname given by the Spanish Civil Guard to Ramon Vila Capdevila, reflects about the libertarian resistance against Franco's regime through the last active guerrilla fighter. In 1951 the CNT ordered the retreat of its militants; however Ramon Vila remained in the woods of inland Catalonia where he restarted the fight operating on his own.
Summertime. In a camping, three little girls listen to an old mysterious story about a missing kid. They start to investigate.
Also Directed by Nicolás Pereda
Tales of Two Who Dreamt is set in a housing block in Toronto and pivots on representation and self-representation. Here, a Roma family rehearses the stories of their past for the upcoming hearing on their residency status.
Eleven award winning directors explore why nearly one out of every two students in Latin America never graduates high school.
When Gabino's father returns home after a long absence, the two men awkwardly attempt to re-establish a relationship; but Gabino and his mother quickly tire of this man who has become a stranger to them and decide to kick him out, before realizing that he has already left. Gabino eventually tracks his father down and spends time with him in his rundown apartment, trying to figure out if there is any possibility for the two of them to ever truly communicate. Though Greatest Hits continues Pereda's exploration of his perennial themes of absence, masculinity and the difficulty of maintaining a family, it opens up a whole new set of aesthetic questions through a bold formal gambit: halfway through, the entire narrative reboots and starts from scratch with another actor playing one of the key characters, leading to different iterations of events already witnessed.
The Palace is a documentary that follows the everyday life of seventeen women who live together, sharing a large house for emotional and financial reasons. They help each other to train for various jobs. Most become nannies, domestic workers and private nurses for elderly patients.
Vicente (Gabino Rodríguez) is a young farmer in a rural village who scrapes by while taking care of his ill grandmother. Several of Vicente’s uncles intend to their ailing mother’s land without her knowledge. Vicente seeks help from the municipal president who, between shooting hoops on a desolate court, tells him that if he wants justice, he must head to the capital to meet with government officials. Although he hasn’t seen her since he was a child, Vicente sets off in search of his mother, who works as a maid in maze-like Mexico City. With the help of his mother’s employer, a sophisticated middle-aged woman, he finds the government offices where he presents his case. His situation isn’t easily resolved, especially since he does not have the deed to his grandmother’s plot of land, and Vicente finds the complexities of the legal system to be completely overwhelming.
An itinerant mover works from the streets of Mexico City with his partner and lives with his beleaguered mother. A heightened tension within the home – by the absent older brother and unmentioned father. Gabino's casual pursuit of a career is interrupted by a series of intense and almost satirically telenovela-esque domestic vignettes.
A series of auditions is taking place in a museum-like living room. Various men improvise or deliver prepared lines, rehearse gestures and slogans, aim guns, and collapse as if mortally wounded. The theme of revolution is repeatedly invoked. In between, there are scenes of a desert landscape. Three men seeking to join the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the last century have lost their way. Conflicts smolder among them, water is running low, and mutual mistrust is beginning to take hold. Placing the reenactment of a possible historical event alongside the preparations for it serves to underline the theatricality of every cinematic account of history. Moreover, on a kind of playful meta-meta-level, the scenes in which the actors feel their way through set pieces from a Beatles song or standard battle slogans allow the viewer to witness the simultaneous construction and deconstruction of a collective myth of revolution.
Summer of Goliath is a documentary/fiction hybrid that narrates various stories of the people of the town of Huilotepec in rural Mexico. Teresa's husband has disappeared and she believes he has left her for another woman. Gabino, her son, is a soldier who searches cars at the side of a country road, where very few cars pass by. He hopes one day him and Alberto, his soldier partner, will get machine guns to further intimidate the people driving by. Amalio, Nico, and Oscar are three brothers whose stories we learn through a series of interviews and reenactments. Their father left them many years ago, and their mother can barely support them. Oscar has gained the nickname Goliath after the mysterious death of his girlfriend.
Carefully shot in black and white, All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence is a meditation on the filming of a strange play: a fascinating monologue by actress, director, performance artist and political activist Jesusa Rodriguez of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz’s poem First I Dream.
Enigmatic and deceptively playful in tone, this film from Gabino Rodríguez, in collaboration with Nicolás Pereda, boldly transforms mundane, realist observations at a rural Mexican schoolhouse into fantasy and a sly comment on childhood, rituals, and race.
Also Directed by John Akomfrah
Through juxtaposing and layering archival footage with text, music and photographs, The Unfinished Conversation crosses the memory landscape of Stuart Hall, the Jamaican-born British cultural theorist, to reflect on the nature and complexities of memory and identity.
The subject matter of Memory Room 451 is the cultural and historical significance of 20th-century hairstyles – the Afro, the conk, dreadlocks – in Black communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Akomfrah has disguised this exploration as a science fiction story – in the manner of the groundbreaking writers profiled in The Last Angel of History – while providing a bravura display of the aesthetics of video art in the 1990s. The tale of visitors from the future who gather dreams from unwitting subjects in order to construct a history of the Black diaspora both defamiliarizes Akomfrah’s ongoing project and points to the danger that extracting history from memory can be a kind of expropriation.
Purple is a six-channel video installation addressing climate change, human communities and the wilderness. At a time when greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are at their highest levels in history, with people experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, including shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather events, Akomfrah’s Purple brings a multitude of ideas into conversation. These include animal extinctions, the memory of ice, the plastic ocean and global warming. Akomfrah has combined hundreds of hours of archival footage with newly shot film and a hypnotic sound score to produce the video installation.
Speak Like a Child, the feature film debut of documentary director John Akomfrah, explores the intense friendship that evolves between three troubled teenagers growing up in an isolated children's home on the Northumbrian coast. The desolate beauty of the coastline is captured in stunning panoramas, while strong performances by the young cast help to create a lyrical and poignant drama.
Louis Armstrong is one of the most recognizable figures in jazz, with his incomparable trumpet playing and beaming smile. This video profiles Armstrong from his humble beginnings in New Orleans through his career as America's Ambassador of Good Will. Film clips, vintage photographs and interviews with family, friends, fellow musicians and Armstrong himself are woven together to tell the story of this legendary personality.
Auto Da Fé is a diptych that looks at migration through the lens of religious persecution. Presented as a poetic period drama, the film presents a series of eight historical migrations over the last 400 years, starting with the little known 1654 fleeing of Sephardic Jews from Catholic Brazil to Barbados. As the film develops, we are presented with tale after tale of populations being displaced along religious lines, right up to the present day migrations from Hombori, Mali and Mosul, Iraq. Religion, persecution and migration are, it seems, old and continuing bedfellows. The work was filmed on location in Barbados, but the landscape is deliberately anonymous, reflecting the universal nature of these stories.
The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.
Vertigo Sea is a three-screen film installation that explores what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls 'the sublime seas'. Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources and newly shot footage, Akomfrah's piece focuses on the disorder and cruelty of the whaling industry and juxtaposes it with scenes of many generations of migrants making epic crossings of the ocean for a better life.
The Airport, a three-screen film installation conceived as a meditation on Greek history and its recent financial crisis, set around the landscapes of Southern Greece and an abandoned airfield near Athens, recalls the work of two filmmaking greats: Stanley Kubrick and Theo Angelopolous.
John Akomfrah’s seminal Riot traces the riots in Liverpool during July 1981 in a climate of economic recession under Thatcher’s regime. Akomfrah captures this turning point in Britain’s struggle towards multicultural democracy through interviews revealing the ghettoisation and racial abuse in Toxteth that escalated with stop-and-search policing tactics following the “sus” laws.
Also Directed by Lav Diaz
A man is wrongly jailed for murder while the real killer roams free. The murderer is an intellectual frustrated with his country’s never-ending cycle of betrayal and apathy. The convict is a simple man who finds life in prison more tolerable, when something mysterious and strange starts happening to him.
Erwin Romulo, the late Alexis Tioseco’s best friend, recalls the events after the critic and his girlfriend’s untimely death in their home in Quezon City. Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the events. The pain of recalling is palpable.
A wandering peddler separates from his fellow salesman and becomes involved with criminals in the jungle.
A terribly cool, hip youth film that throws awareness to the winds of MTV rock and roll, and post Generation- X teenage wasteland fantasies.
Deliberately structured and less beholden to its narrative, the film is told in three parts, with each part pertaining to each of the three visits of the time-travelling visitor from when the country was fighting for independence from Spain.
Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married professor, who Mi-Sook once dated herself. The level of social embarrassment goes off the scale. In Naomi Kawase’s Koma (Japan, 34min), Kang Jun-Il travels to a village in rural Japan to honour his grandfather’s dying wish by returning a Buddhist scroll to its ancestral home. Amid ancient superstitions, a new relationship forms. And in Lav Diaz’ Butterflies Have No Memories (Philippines, 42min) ‘homecoming queen’ Carol returns to the economically depressed former mining town she came from – and becomes the target of an absurd kidnapping plot hatched by resentful locals. Serving as his own writer, cameraman and editor, Diaz casts the film entirely from members of his crew and delivers a well-seasoned mix of social realism and fantasy. —bfi
The boy has something to do in his life, he trains himself and makes plans. Then there is a knock on the door and something pulls away and he literally stays in the rain. Lightning and thunder patter the water, devouring everything. Incredulous, the boy looks up to heaven - is this his destiny?
A lowly farmer whose wife is afflicted with a lingering illness gets involved in kidnapping that goes awry and culminates in tragedy. Years later, he turns to a crusading lady journalist to confess the details of the sensational crime that remains unsolved.
After spending the last 30 years in prison, Horacia is immediately released when someone else confessed to the crime. Still overwhelmed by her new freedom, she comes to the painful realization that her aristocratic former lover had set her up. As kidnappings targeting the wealthy begin to proliferate, Horacia sees the opportunity to plot her revenge.
This is a Filipino omnibus film about three different journeys.
Also Directed by Rama Burshtein
Eighteen-year-old Shira is the youngest daughter of the Mendelman family. She is about to be married off to a promising young man of the same age and background. It is a dream come true, and Shira feels prepared and excited. On Purim, her twenty-eight-year-old sister, Esther, dies while giving birth to her first child, Mordechay. The pain and grief that overwhelm the family postpone Shira's promised match. Everything changes when a match is proposed to Yochay-Esther's late husband-to a widow from Belgium. Yochay feels it's too early, although he realizes that sooner or later he must seriously consider getting married again. When the girls' mother finds out that Yochay may marry the widow and move to Belgium with her only grandchild, she proposes a match between Shira and the widower. Shira will have to choose between her heart's wish and her family duty. She will find out that the void which she must choose exists only within her heart.
Michal is 32 years old. She became religious 12 years ago, and only now is she getting married. A month before the wedding, while checking out the catering for the event, the groom has a change of heart and the wedding is called off. Michal feels she’s unable to go back to ordinary life, to the usual course of matchmaking. She feels this is the moment to change something very basic in her personality. A simple belief that God is good and sweet; that He wants to give and is only waiting for her to wish it. Michal goes on a month-long journey lasting up to the planned wedding day: “I have the venue, the dress, the apartment; God can easily come up with my groom.”
Feigi, 18, is a young, troubled woman who - following a failed suicide attempt - attaches her future happiness to Nathan, the 35-year-old married son of the leader of the ultra-orthodox community in which they both live. Feigi grows dangerously close to Nathan, who is expecting his first child with his wife.
Also Directed by Hala Alabdalla
Focusing on the work of cartoonists in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and Palestine, this documentary examines how comic strips and caricatures are becoming a vehicle for dissent and a voice for freedom of expression in the Arab world.
Veteran Syrian director Hala Alabdalla returns to LFF with a moving portrait of her late friend and pioneer of Arab non-fiction cinema.
Short documentary about political prisoners struggling to come to terms with haunting memories, produced for the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The film presents a reflection on the effects of prison in general and on the theatre director Ghassan Jbaii in particular. The artist used his work to come to terms with his haunting memories and regain the world outside the prison walls.
An affectionate portrait of writer and publisher Farouk Mardem-Bey.
Interviews with three Syrian women who live in exile.
Also Directed by Jazmín López
Four friends meet on a remote estate to create a cinematic re-enactment of three iconic works that embodied the social and artistic revolution of 50 years ago.
Deep in the forest a group of five friends wander around like a lion herd. Lost in their word games, they play and seduce each other while going back and forth into adulthood territory, in a desperate search to avoid their already written story.
short film by Jazmin Lopez
2008 / 35MM / 2 Min.
Dir. Jazmin Lopez 2007 / S16MM / 8 Min.
A short film made for "Venezia 70 - Future Reloaded."
Dir. Jazmin Lopez 2009 / S16MM / 12 Min.
Also Directed by Franco Piavoli
A zebu disappears while children are drawing it. They find it again in the woods. The notes of a harp accompany their multi-coloured joy. This short was made with children from a nursery school in Mantua. Playing with colours, the children seem to conquer the world.
Visions and suggestions of the shores of Lake Garda.
Emigrants from Calabria arrive at Milan station with their luggage, to make their home there or set off for other destinations. A man falls asleep in a waiting room. The travellers look lost and tired. The language of the others is henceforth incomprehensible; they are already foreigners in their own country.
Throughout the seasons, the work of a farmer in his vegetable garden, from the seed to its fruit.
Young peasants come together to dance in the evening. The girls arrive by bike; the boys get ready for them by doing their hair. The less shy amongst them begin to dance. Then, some of them go home, singing as they go, delighted to have obtained a promise. Others take advantage of the dark to make love.
Eternal and cyclical movement. A young woman crosses the seasons. With his 8mm Paillard, Piavoli starts his poetic journey with a drawn-out gaze on nature, which condenses passing time into a single shot.
2004 documentary by Franco Piavoli based on correspondence between poets Alessandro Parronchi and Umberto Bellintani.
Using few words and gorgeous imagery, this is a poetic painting of a family, each in their own space on an August afternoon.
In a Renaissance castle, masks and costumes are moving animated by moonlight. In this magical atmosphere, the painting of a girl comes to life, while two young men behind bars and listen to music and singing in a large room a prince wanders in the throes of loneliness
Also Directed by Amit Dutta
Deftly blending sound, image, and text, this subtly hypnotic film meditates upon the figure of Singh commingled with surreal tableaux inspired by the artist’s paintings. First glimpsed wandering the valley’s dense woodlands, the painter is seen peering through the sun-dappled canopy; soon he spies a mysterious footprint and follows the forest path to the base of a gnarled old tree. There he sits in Buddha-like repose while Dutta’s protean camera conjures a series of arresting images: rocks defy gravity and levitate gently upwards; lichens and moss multiply in layered afterimages mimicking Singh’s intricate brushstrokes; and a celestial maiden takes to the sky, bearing ambrosial milk to the artist’s darkened atelier. Dutta masterfully weaves these iconic passages together with Singh’s painterly technique, merging the still and moving image into an impressionistic assemblage that pays homage to the legends, folk traditions, and artistry of this unique corner of India.
The film is based on and inspired from the tinted brush drawings, sketches and some finished yet minimalistic works of the 18th century master miniature painter Nainsukh. Even in some of his finished paintings, the artist did not hide his corrections and afore-thoughts, which he allowed to show through a mostly untouched stark page. This film attempts the same.
The 18th-century Indian painter Nainsukh of Guler receives a poetic, visually stunning tribute from a young Indian filmmaker employing an arresting pictorial language. Shot in the region where Nainsukh produced his most celebrated work, this is a meditative and meticulous recreation of the world of an artistic genius.
A thespian rehearses a Sanskrit play from 2nd century CE. The footage is robbed of sound. The inter-titles try to tell the story.
A tribute to Jonas Mekas. A tree is cut down, a caterpillar climbs its own thread, and drops of moisture tremble on broad leaves.
The film juxtaposes two journeys, one in search of the name of a Pahari painter lost in genealogical registers, and the other in search of a lake once called the eighth wonder of the world.
Towards the end of the eighth century, an architect journeys across the lower Himalayas in search of the perfect site for constructing a temple, not merely as a place of worship but as a monumental record crystallizing the collective accomplishment of a civilization.
The village artist Jangarh Singh Shyam left home and became a well-known contemporary painter. He committed suicide in 2001. Through his art, places and stories, the filmmaker explores the traces he left on his path.
Dutta’s new feature finds Hindi experimental writer Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927–2020)—who was born in what is now Pakistan and migrated to India during Partition—living with his daughter in a small apartment in New York. “At ninety-one, after a lifetime of his love affair with language, he feels at a loss for words. His mercurial intelligence scales his life’s journey, mostly in silence. He reads out his own work, anxious to access the ‘dance of language,’ for expressing which he had paid dearly. He takes brief walks into the city, the sounds are not those of his literature. He has visitors, enacting an avant-garde play. He watches, silent, his mind in a place deeper inside him, even as his senses are alert, looking outwards”
The critic Max Nelson asks Amit Dutta a series of ten questions. He replies in the form of a video essay.
Also Directed by Andrew Wonder
Fourteen teams of hackers. Three minutes to pitch. One shot to fund their dreams. Immerse yourself in Angelhack, one of most competitive global hackathons.
A young girl uses her newfound superpower to steal her high school crush's virginity.
A homeless woman living in the tunnels below New York City survives on her own terms in the days leading up to a blizzard.
Also Directed by Milcho Manchevski
Two nine-year-old girls report a flasher to the police even though they never saw him. Three filmmakers meet the only residents of a deserted village - an elderly brother and sister who have not spoken to each other in 16 years. Retired cleaning women are found raped and strangled in a small town. The fiction slowly turns into a documentary.
A successful young doctor with a beautiful wife, a happy child, and a comfortable house finds his life suddenly changed in ways he never thought possible after being injured in a serious car accident. To the outside eye Lazar Perkov has everything -- indeed his friends and colleagues have even gone so far as to christen him with the nickname "Lucky." But appearances can sometimes be...
One night a grandmother accidentally stays locked in a department store. The path from fear to pleasure due to the new situation changes the grandmother as a person.
Masses moving across the sweltering concrete, to the glass towers and into the subway mouths, eyes glued to the little screens, inhaling the images from halfway around the globe, oblivious to the life at their own feet.
A charismatic vet with mental issues captures the attention of a documentary film crew who are ready to exploit her story for their own shot at independent movie fame in this very modern, urban fairy tale set amidst a fractured ideal of family.
A short film from 1981 about which not many information are known.
An experimental film about that one hypnotic moment on a regular, unassuming Tuesday when one realizes that time has stopped and the universe has been sucked into a single smile.
Two parallel tales of redemption, a century apart. In the New York storyline, Edge hunts for Angela's gold to pay back a debt, and gradually grows closer to her. In the Macedonian story, the brothers end up fighting for opposite sides of a revolution, with the religious Elijah taking up sides with the Ottoman sultan and gunslinger Luke joining "the Teacher" , a Macedonian rebel.
Two couples - one rich, one poor - become threesomes.
The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
Also Directed by Guido Lombardi
Là-bas: A Criminal Education
Short by Guido Lombardi.
Salvo was five when his father Vincenzo was arrested, practically before his eyes. Seven years later Salvo lives with his uncles and his cousin a controlled and peaceful existence in the Turin area, but his father returns and claims his son for four days. Vincenzo has to carry an important load to Bari and brings Salvo (nomen est omen) with him as insurance: a child is better than a gun, he says, because his presence in the event of a possible police detention can have a distracting effect . This however is not the only reason why Vincenzo wants Salvo with him, and the "Salv-atore" child will prove to be a potential vehicle of redemption for that messed up father, but not entirely devoid of feelings and attentions.
Also Directed by Luca Severi
"That Click" is a documentary about legendary photographer Douglas Kirkland that with his camera portrayed sixty years of pop culture ranging from photojournalism to celebrity portraits, from film photography to global events. After taking some of the most iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe, with his unique style and approach he described fashion, celebrities and show business with immortal images that still influence us today.
When a modern Ulysses, struggling with PTSD, wakes up without memory in a post-apocalyptic desert, an alleged Calypso tries to help him uncover the truth.