Words with Gods
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.
Guillermo Arriaga
Guillermo Arriaga
Jorge Guerricaechevarría
Mira Nair
Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica
Amos Gitai
Amos Gitai
Hideo Nakata
Hideo Nakata
Hector Babenco
Hector Babenco
Bahman Ghobadi
Álex de la Iglesia
Álex de la Iglesia
Warwick Thornton
Warwick Thornton
Reema Kagti
Dunja Kusturica
Casts & Crew
Miranda Tapsell
Chico Diaz
Tanuja
Masatoshi Nagase
Yaël Abecassis
Zohar Strauss
Sarai Givaty
Juan Fernández
Pepón Nieto
Paco Sagárzazu
Emir Kusturica
Yılmaz Erdoğan
Demián Bichir
Emilio Echevarría
Also Directed by Guillermo Arriaga
The third episode of the Cities of Love franchise, Rio, I Love You is an anthology, created by 10 visionary directors from across the globe. The story line of each segment focuses on an encounter of love in a different neighborhood of the city, demonstrating the distinctive qualities and character of that location. The film serves to bridge gaps between cultures, educating and entertaining the audience, while celebrating unique and universal expressions of love.
A tragicomic short film imbued with magical realism that revolves around the theme of death, focusing specifically on the Mexican people's bond with the departed.
A group of American soldiers travel into Mexico for an unknown mission and they encounter a surprising world which changes their views.
A young woman and her four-year-old daughter drive across desolated hills. Everything looks fine and they seem to enjoy the ride, until an accident sends them into the nightmare of darkness.
A trailer is burning in the middle of a plain. The bodies of two adulterous lovers are found. Scenes from both families, before and after the dramatic events, suggest an unusual connection between them. But what is their secret?
Also Directed by Mira Nair
The story of Zainab and Arif, who live their son, Munna, in Brooklyn. Zainab makes the complicated decision to leave her protected life and follow her heart. One of eight shorts commissioned by the United Nations on themes concerning global society.
The story is inspired by the assassination of Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party.
It is September 11, 2001, and a young man goes missing in New York. Because of his eastern name and his Islamic religion, he is suspected of being involved in the World Trade Center attack. The FBI inquire about him. The neighbors of his family show their disapproval. His family hold out hope that he will be found and exonerated. (Originally appeared as a segment of the omnibus film "11'09"01 - September 11", but later presented as a separate short film.)
A young girl overcomes her disadvantaged upbringing in the slums of Uganda to become a Chess master.
As the romantic monsoon rains loom, the extended Verma family reunites from around the globe for a last-minute arranged marriage in New Delhi. This film traces five intersecting stories, each navigating different aspects of love as they cross boundaries of class, continent and morality.
In New York, a Pakistani native finds that his American Dream has collapsed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Before Slumdog Millionaire came Salaam Bombay!, Mira Nair’s Oscar-nominated drama tells the moving story of life on the streets of Bombay as seen through the eyes of Chaipu, a twelve-year-old boy living rough in the city.
One of a four-film series on the AIDS epidemic in India, this film examines the virus as Indian society's great class leveler, following its transmission through interweaving stories that link urban and rural India.
A look at the life of legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world.
8 shorts centered around 8 themes directed by 8 famous film directors involved and sharing their opinion on progress, on the set-backs and the challenges our planet faces today.
Also Directed by Emir Kusturica
A program of short films from some of the cinema's greatest diectors. Curated by Emir Kusturica and Stephen Frears. - George Lucas "1.42.08 to Qualify" (1966) - Ridley Scott "A Boy and a Bicycle" (1965) - Robert Zemeckis "The Lift" (1972) - Tony Scott "One of the Missing" (1969) - Emir Kusturica "Guernica" (1978) - Luc Besson "L'avant dernier" (1981) - Lars von Trier "Nocturne" (1980) - Terry Gilliam "Storytime" (1968) - Paul Verhoeven "A Lizzard Too Much" (1960) - Roman Polanski "Le gros et le maigre" (1960) - Jane Campion "Peel" (1982) - Stephen Frears "The Burning" (1967)
Set during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, Luka is a mild-mannered railway clerk whose life is turned upside down, not just by the outbreak of the war, but when his wife runs off with a local musician. Then Luka's son is conscripted and eventually captured in the fighting. To recover his son, Luka is commanded to guard a pretty young Muslim nurse who will be used in a hostage swapping operation.
Tito's break-up with Stalin in 1948 marked the beginning of not only confusing, but also very dangerous years for many hard-core Yugoslav communists. A careless remark about the newspaper cartoon is enough for Mesha to join many arrested unfortunates. His family is now forced to cope with the situation and wait for his release from prison.
El Pepe, una vida suprema is a documentary on the life of Uruguayan politician and former guerrilla fighter José Mujica.
Jelena, a woman of character, rules an inn in an isolated place in the countryside. She lives with her two sons: Martin and Jakov. Martin has been married to Kata for 5 years, but never succeeded in having a child. Jakov sleeps with his mother in postures suggesting incest, but he is in love with Kata. Each night he hears her cries, the sexual acts with her husband inevitably finish with violence. One day, Jakov can't stand anymore, he leaves, and Kata is found dead the next morning. Two characters arrive then : an old man, who turns to be the father of Martin ; he settles and declares being returned to die here. And a girl, that Martin will keep as his new wife.
Seven short films - each one focused on the plight of a different child protagonist.
An old man named Zivojin Markovic, living in a remote village prays for his grandson Cane to go to the city, sell his cow and bring back a wife. In the city he is supposed to meet up with his grandfather's stepbrother, but this man is dead. Instead, he meets this man's two grandsons, two good-natured brothers who are nevertheless small-time criminals and experts in demolition. Cane soon clicks with these men, and also falls in love with a schoolgirl (Jasna), who he wants to marry as part of his testament with his grandfather. He gets involved in this girl's family affairs, rescuing both her and her mother from prostitution and gangsters headed by a man called Bajo, and the new group of people return to the small village in time to celebrate Zivojin's wedding to his neighbor, despite the gangsters' best efforts to stop the celebration, which results in a double wedding.
A young man grows up in Sarajevo in the 1960s, under the shadow of his good, but ailing father, and gets attracted by the world of small-time criminals.
In this luminous tale set in the former Yugoslavia, Perhan, an engaging young Romany with telekinetic powers, is seduced by the quick-cash world of petty crime that threatens to destroy him and those he loves. Long version screened by the Sarajevo television in 5 one-hour episodes.
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.
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.
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.
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 Hideo Nakata
Shinigami-kun, alias grim reaper #413, is a rookie who pronounces the death of those scheduled to die and brings souls to the nether world. He would appear with the signature phrase “Congratulations! I’m here to call on you” although it is hard to say how this can be a happy occasion, and watch over the dying. To a grim reaper, persuading people attempting to commit suicide and preventing unforeseen deaths is also an important task. But because #413 is new to this grim reaper work, he has a tendency to lean towards humans in his judgments, break the rules of the nether world and get reprimanded by his superior.
Sara, a young actress, is able to land the leading role in big theater play, but soon learns that somebody or something is trying to end the production at all cost, which puts Sara in deadly danger.
A group of people must find out how to stop the newborn deadly curse, which has born and gone viral after a Youtuber accidentally captured a vengeful ghost on camera.
Madarame Baku is a mysterious gambler. His nickname is Usogui (literally The Lie Eater). Club Kakerou is the top illegal gambling den, where gamblers vie to become the best in their profession. Seeing through the lies of others, Madarame Baku challenges a variety of high stakes games at Club Kakerou.
A somber paranormal thriller that offers an original, exciting variation of the tale of two men with supernatural abilities, locked in a duel to the death. A battle between a man who can control people with a stare, and the only man he cannot control. When their fate cross, the survival battle begins. The two men with inevitable fate, who will survive?
Sleeping Bride is the story of a girl, Yumi, who since birth, has never been awake. A boy called Yuuichi finds the girl in the hospital while he is a patient there. A nurse remarks that the girl is 'Sleeping Beauty', and Yuuichi believes that a kiss from a prince will wake her, just like the story. Yuuichi returns to see Yumi every day, says 'Wake up, I'm the prince' and kisses her. Ten years later he restarts his daily ritual to see Yumi, one day she wakes up.
While investigating the horrifying death of her boyfriend, Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani) learns about a videotape haunted by the spirit of a disturbing girl named Sadako, which kills anyone who watches it exactly one week later. When her boyfriend’s son, Yoichi, starts to develop the same psychic abilities as Sadako, Takano must find a way to keep the boy and herself from becoming the next victims.
Onoda Shizuru is a university student in Kyoto. As soon as she starts living out her long cherished desire, the strange horror newspapers begin to arrive. At first, she believes them to be a prank but the stories in the newspapers begin happening one after the other. Murders, accidents, abuse, natural disasters, injustice... these newspapers predict all sorts of tragedies. What is the truth behind them?
Also Directed by Hector Babenco
After 12 years, Sofía and Rímini decided to separate. While Rímini finds it easy to move on and start a new life, Sofía stays stuck in the past and constantly harasses him. She reappears again and again on Rímini's horizon to reconquer him, torture him or redeem him.
Hector Babenco injected autobiographical details into this tale of an Argentine teen's first romance. Living with his parents, 17-year-old Juan (Walter Quiroz) hangs out with several intellectuals who would like to photograph the human soul. The girlfriend of the group's financier is Ana (Maria Luisa Mendonca), and Juan is attracted to her, despite the knowledge that she spent two years at a clinic because she was "crazy." Juan sees Ana when he can and trains as a door-to-door salesman, but when the German photographer on the soul project gives him a viewfinder, it changes his life, putting him on the path to his later success as a Hollywood director. Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
Martin and Hazel Quarrier are small-town fundamentalist missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. Their remote mission was previously run by the Catholics, before the natives murdered them all. They are sent by the pompous Leslie Huben, who runs the missionary effort in the area but who seems more concerned about competing with his Catholic 'rivals' than in the Indians themselves. Hazel is terrified of the Indians while Martin is fascinated. Soon American pilot Lewis Moon joins the Indian tribe but is attracted by Leslie's young wife, Andy. Can the interaction of these characters and cultures, and the advancing bulldozers of civilization, avoid disaster?
Pixote, a 10-year-old runaway boy, is arrested on the streets of São Paulo during a police round-up homeless people. Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of the runaways are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape where they make their living by the life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.
Albany, New York, Halloween, 1938. Francis Phelan and Helen Archer are bums, back in their birth city. She was a singer on the radio, he a major league pitcher. Death surrounds them: she's sick, a pal has cancer, he digs graves at the cemetery and visits the grave of his infant son whom he dropped; visions of his past haunt him, including ghosts of two men he killed. That night, out drinking, Helen tries to sing at a bar. Next day, Fran visits his wife and children and meets a grandson. He could stay, but decides it's not for him. Helen gets their things out of storage and finds a hotel. Amidst their mistakes and dereliction, the film explores their code of fairness and loyalty.
Documentary about race car driver Emerson Fittipaldi
History of a famous Brazilian bandit of the early seventies and his fight against a death squad.
Sought after by several reputable women, a bohemian becomes obsessed with a prostitute.
When a doctor decides to carry out an AIDS prevention program inside Latin America’s largest prison: the Casa de Detenção de São Paulo - Carandiru, he discovers the victim of one of the darkest days in Brazilian History when the State of São Paulo’s Military Police, with the excuse for law enforcement, shot to death 111 people. Based on real facts and on the book written by Dráuzio Varella.
Diego is a film director very close to death, surrounded by people who are having trouble dealing with his current tempestuous mood. Chances are he won't survive, but if he does, that means he needs to relearn how to live. live.
Also Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
During the war between Iran and Iraq, a group of Iranian Kurd musicians set off on an almost impossible mission. They will try to find Hanareh, a singer with a magic voice who crossed the border and may now be in danger in the Iraqi Kurdistan. As in his previous films, this Kurdish director is again focusing on the oppression of his people.
Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.
This documentary shows us how a Daf elaborated. It's about a family that all their children are blinded and they're running their family business. They're making Dafs which is an Iranian hand percussion musical instrument and nowadays it's mostly played in Kurdish folk songs.
Mamo, an old and legendary Kurdish musician living in Iran, plans to give one final concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. After seven months of trying to get a permit and rounding up his ten sons, he sets out for the long and troublesome journey in a derelict bus, denying a recurring vision of his own death at half moon. Halfway the party halts at a small village to pick up female singer Hesho, which will only add to the difficulty of the undertaking, as it is forbidden for Iranian women to sing in public, let alone in the company of men. But Mamo is determined to carry through, if not for the gullible antics of the bus driver.
Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks he's been dead for over twenty years.
For Nariman the pilot and Helly Luv, an aspiring singer, being Kurdish is not just an identity; it’s a full-time job. Nariman needs young recruits for his flying school—a goal made darkly comic since he just survived a plane crash—while the illustrious Helly collects Kalashnikov rifles and a sea of Kurdish flags to produce her music video. In the midst of another war against the Kurdish people, Nariman reminisces about a long-lost love, and Helly finds herself connecting with Kurdish children at a refugee camp near the Syrian border, who are in urgent need of inspiration and hope.
Turtles can fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iran border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
After their father dies, a family of five are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq. Matters are made worse when 12 year old Ayoub, the new head of the family, is told that his handicapped brother, Madi, needs an immediate operation in order to remain alive. This heartbreaking tale shows the lengths to which a family will go in order to survive in the harshest of conditions, where even the horses are fed liquor in order to work.
Kurdish composer Boran is no longer able to see the ocean, obstructed by a new building, and a tragedy befalls him…
Also Directed by Álex de la Iglesia
The journey of Javier, the obese Sad Clown, starts during his childhood in the midst of the Spanish civil war in 1937. His father, one of Spain’s most prominent jesters, is detained and tortured by the fascist regime.
Nino and Bruno are two comedians who reach the heights of success with their duo act, turning them into huge TV celebrities. However, the hate between them grows as fast, and as much, as their fame
Julia, a real estate agent, finds an enormous amount of money hidden in a dead man's apartment, a stroke of luck that will force her to face the wrath of the very peculiar inhabitants of the condominium, headed by an unscrupulous administrator.
Once in a lifetime
In this heist film turned horror fest, director Álex de la Iglesia's love of mayhem is on full display as a gang of gold thieves lands in a coven of witches who are preparing for an ancient ritual -- and in need of a sacrifice.
In downtown Madrid, a series of mysterious gunshots trap a motley assortment of people in a decrepit bar.
At Oxford University, a professor and a grad student work together to try and stop a potential series of murders seemingly linked by mathematical symbols
A couple with a newborn child arrives at a big old house, the ideal place to start a real family life. Before going to bed, the couple checks the operation of the listening device installed in their baby's room, whom they can listen to and watch. They soon discover that there is someone else in the house who sits next to the baby's crib every night.
Also Directed by Warwick Thornton
Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.
Filmmaker Warwick Thornton investigates our relationship to the Southern Cross, in this fun and thought provoking ride through Australia's cultural and political landscape.
Paddy finds there are two separate laws, the white and the black.
Samson and Delilah's world is small- an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone the discover that life isn't always fair, but love never judges.
Following two indigenous Australian hunters to battle the last colony of vampires in the South-Australian desert.
Writer and Director Warwick Thornton has assembled a collection of the most poignant, sad, funny and absurd ghost stories from around Australia. He will bring them to life with the help of some of Australia's most iconic actors as the storytellers.
It’s 1929 on the vast, desert-like, Eastern Arrernte Nation lands that are now known as the Central Australian outback. Sam Kelly, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works the land of a kind preacher, Fred Smith. After an ill-tempered bully arrives in town and Kelly kills him in self-defence, he and his wife go on the run as a posse gathers to hunt him down.
Meth Kelly explores how Australia’s colonial frontier narrative has been shaped by the imaginary heroic actions of the cult figure Ned Kelly. Through a video work projected in one of the shadowy tunnels of the ex-convict structures at Cockatoo Island, this work questions the legitimacy of Kelly’s hero status through a modern reinterpretation of his moral persona. Thornton skews the national narrative rooted in the romance of a Western, by transforming Kelly into a “meth head robbing a 7 Eleven”, placing him in a banal (sub)urban delinquent realm, far removed from cult status. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney.
Tnorala is the Aboriginal name for Gosse's Bluff, a dramatic meteorite impact crater set in a vast plain 175km west of Alice Springs. This significant dreaming site for Western Arrernte people is steeped in mystery and tragedy. The story of its creation and the events that occurred there are narrated to the camera by Aunty Mavis Malbunka, one of the traditional story-tellers for the place.
In 1955, filmmaker Chauvel debuted Jedda. His star was a young Arrernte woman from Alice Springs named Ngarla Kunoth, or Rosalie. Her story, the story of what happened before and after Chauvel's film, is told in Rosalie's Journey.