Maria de Medeiros
In 1918, Maria Adelaide Coelho da Cunha, heiress and owner of the Diário de Notícias, leaves the social, cultural and family luxury in which she lives to escape with a petty chauffeur, 26 years younger.
Vera, who fought in the armed left-wing movements against the Brazilian military dictatorship, has lived in multiple South American countries. Her daughter Tânica has been married to another woman for fifteen years, and they're about to have their first child.
Oct. 1965. Pamplona's troupe of giant figures, is invited to parade in NY. But not all of them will be allowed to appear: due to racial discrimination, the American authorities will ban the participation of the two black giants.
In a near future, due to the effects of an uncompromising law on the eco-sustainability of supports, paper has become a rare item, a luxury possession, controlled by the "Big Z": Zimurgh Corporation.
In lawless badlands, reclusive Cabeleira sets out to discover the fate of his gunman father and grows to be a feared assassin himself.
Seances, co-created with the National Film Board of Canada, presents a wholly new way of experiencing film narrative. By dynamically generating a series of film sequences in unique configurations, potentially hundreds of thousands of new stories are conjured by code. Each will exist only in the moment—no pausing, scrubbing, or sharing—offering the audience one chance to see the generated film. This project, co-created by the ever imaginative Guy Maddin, is a visual discourse on the impact of loss within film. All the sequences pay homage to lost silent films from the early day of cinema. Seances is nostalgic but it is also frequently hilarious. Part of the joy and sadness of Seances is that many possible narratives are created but they can be only viewed once before they disappear forever.
A young man who lives with his mother and has never known his father, heads off to look for him. He finds a cynical and Machiavellian man who works as a publisher in Paris. After he attempts to kill him, he finds filial love thanks to his uncle.
Based on the incredibly true story of a Spanish man with Multiple Esclorosis who tried to finish an Iron-Man: 3,8km swimming, 180km cycling and 42 running. And he was told that he could not make 100 meters.
A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.
A young poet, Paul Susser (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais), meets his master, the great author Samuel Beckett (Stephen McHattie), in a small café. The two men initiate a complex friendship that spans the last two decades of Beckett's life and forever changes Paul's future.
Hubert Wolfe, bestselling author, suffers from the writer's block for a long time. Thus, he often used a ghost writer, the talented but taciturn Dany. While the deadline for his next novel approaches, Wolfe still requires the help of his secret accomplice. But Dany is going through difficult times and finds himself before a blank page. So he hires a second ghost writer, Quentin, child care educator who lives under the yoke of his mother.
We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli, and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini’s life and his art (represented by scenes from his films, his novel-in-progress Petrolio, and his projected film Porno-Teo-Kolossal) are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one.
Yacine lives with his brother Jamel in a cramped Parisian apartment. He works as a motorcycle courier, although he is also a brilliant political science student. When a delivery job takes him to the home of his professor Richard Artaud, his life is thrown off course. Both the professor and his wife, an actress, show an extraordinary, if disturbingly paternalistic interest in him. Shortly thereafter, the professor suddenly dies and Yacine makes a strange confession to Eléonore: "I am not dead"
The Gang of the Jotas is a wacky take on the famous suitcase mixup at the airport. Nils and Didier are arriving to the South of Spain to play in a badminton tournament. A mysterious and manipulative woman is also coming in to set things straight with the Spanish mafia. When they meet to exchange suitcases, all three of their lives are going to be turned upside down. Although Nils and Didier would never dream of becoming her sidekicks, they agree to tag along. Against all odds, they are going to become first class hitmen ... or maybe not.
The lives of three generations of women who suffered political persecution during the military dictatorship in Brazil.
Maria, a Ukrainian doctor, comes to Portugal to spend a year with Greco, her husband who is also a doctor. Upon arrival at Faro airport she is the only person from Kiev approached by agents of Immigration and Customs that lead her to a room of interrogation, without any explanations. All this occurs because the authorities suspect that something illegal should be behind her trip, since she is from Eastern Europe and her husband is Senegalese.
A bio-doc about Micheline Presle changes into a thrilling investigation of the long hidden truth about European cinema. This mockumentary thriller uncovers Hollywood's unsuspected plot against the European motion picture industry. Numerous directors and stars appear in the film, making it a choice morsel for all film lovers.
An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.
Nasser-Ali, a talented musician, loses the will to live after his wife breaks his beloved violin during an argument. He searches for a replacement, and finding none that sounds quite the same, he vows to die. Eight days later, he does. This is the story of his last week of life, where we see flashbacks and flash forwards of his previous life and his children's futures. We also see appearances of a nude Sophia Loren as well as the angel of death, Azarel. As we see his life, we realize exactly why he chose to end it and the profundity of this choice.
A comedy about funny adventures of the group of French people during the summer vacation.
Two couples are enjoying their summer at the beach, but when the grown son of one couple arrives, it surprisingly stirs something in the husband of the other couple, will the forbidden feelings end badly?
Based on the life of Roberto Carlos Ramos, a Brazilian teacher and storyteller brought up in a state educational institution for poor children.
Documentary about the love-hate relationship between filmmakers and film critics with interviews made at Cannes Film Festival.
Fallen Heroes is a 2007 Italian crime-drama film directed by Paolo Franchi. It entered the competition at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. Wikipedia
Anna and Mara return from a holiday abroad, and realize that Anis, a young Moroccan immigrant, managed to hide in their car in order to cross the border to Italy. At first unsure of what to do, they then decide to take him with them.
A comedy that follows a group of people immersed in Latvia's summer solstice celebration, the shortest night of the year.
A 10 year old girl lives in post WWII rural France with her parents, who are about to divorce. Her older sister leaves home to finish school, and the young girl is left with a mysterious, almost silent housekeeper. Being afraid of the dark, and of other "phenomenoms" including a haunted château nearby, she curiously accepts a stranger she finds in her mansion's barn. This fact contradicts her fearful nature, but fulfills her loneliness. The stranger has run away from a nearby psychiatric clinic, where her father was treating the stranger. She hides the stranger, protects him, and he becomes her best friend. Is this girl searching for true companionship, coming of age, or is she asserting her independence for the first time in her short life?
Set in the 1790s, this historical drama follows the travails of an idealistic noblewoman who helps lead a daring revolution in Italy.
While an opera singers sings in a snowy and cold street, we are allowed to witness a meeting between a man and a woman through blowing net curtains. The music is touched by sadness and the emotions of the characters are no different. Nearer they become while the singer sinks deeper into the melancholy.
All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.
A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.
Rio de Janeiro, 1886. A precious Stradivarius violin presented to Emperor Dom Pedro II is stolen. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are called to solve the case.
Pawel Markowicz suffers from Stendhal syndrome and it is to Dr.Giordano that he tells his secret.
Ana lives in a little village by the sea, with her husband and daughter. He decides to leave for a few days. That seems to be the ideal solution, because Ana needs to finish a work she has been doing for a long time. But her concentration seems threatened when she starts doing her daily walks by the village and the beach: she saves a stranger from death in the sea, meets young Alexandre and Emilia, and her friend Vera turns up in her house. And then, everything changes…
Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.
A team of astronauts on the first mission to Mars crashes onto the surface, losing contact with Earth. With no other recourse, and help millions of miles away, the crew is forced to make desperate choices in order to stay alive. Will they be able to survive as the minutes slip away?
Vansan is 30 years old, but he never learned to make decisions. Whatever it is. Should he marry his girlfriend, should he start a business with his friend, what color should he buy shoes for? Life for him is an eternal dilemma. But one day, fate made a choice for him. Vansan crashes into an advertising post by car and makes a leap in time for 16 years in advance. Now at about forty, he heads a large corporation, is married to a woman with whom he is barely familiar, has a teenage son who is constantly bold to him, and an early-ripened daughter. And he has absolutely no idea what to do with all this. Realizing that he has become everything that he always despised, Vansan is desperate to go back and make the right choice. But can he turn back the clock? ..
Story of the 1974 coup that overthrew the right-wing Portuguese dictatorship--which continued the fascist policies of long-time dictator Antonio Salazar--and of two young army captains who were involved in it.
An elaborate fantasy tale intended for family audiences, Babel tells the story of the Babels, a strange breed of four-foot-tall creatures who once coexisted happily with human beings on planet Earth. However, when the humans built a huge tower to taunt God, he became angry and drove the Babels underground, while scattering the humans to the corners of the Earth and giving them different languages to keep them separate. Thousands of years later, three Babels are searching underground for the Babel Stone presented to them by God when they lose the map -- which is soon snapped up by a dog, who presents it to his master, an advertising man named Patrick. The Babels are desperate to recover the map, and they recruit Patrick's son David to help them find it (and the Babel Stone) before the evil Nemrod can steal the stone and claim its powers.
This romantic comedy from France explores the misadventures of several friends looking for love and trying to define beauty. Daphne is a lovely women who is nonetheless unsure about her looks, compounded by the fact that she's fallen in love with Vincent, who has a policy of only dating models. Daphne's best friend Celine comes up with an idea -- she'll get her pal Jacques to paint a nude portrait of Daphne. When Vincent sees the painting, he'll be more attracted to the woman who posed for it, leading him to her doorstep. But of course, it isn't quite that simple.
A woman journalist, Zoe, knows better than to go into a story with her mind already made up. But that's exactly what she does when she heads off to Spain to write about its men and their macho take (as she sees it) on relationships. As she tries to prove her thesis, she soon realizes that she doesn't know as much about the male sex as she thought. She also finds herself involved in relationships with the wrong men.
A science-fiction film centered around planet Earth receiving a coded message from outer space and the subsequent disappearance of 12,000 inhabitants of Sepuvedra, a free-trade port. The government and the army are convinced that they have been kidnapped by aliens and Professor Larsen, an eminent astrophysicist and UFO expert, is assigned to lead an urgent investigative mission into the deserted town.
Edward is an editor in a small English publishing house. The story concerns what happens when he receives a very good manuscript from Nicholas, an old friend, who up until now has been a hack writer. The manuscript sheds light on events both men lived through, and Edward comes to the conviction that it reveals that it was Nicholas who raped the woman Edward loved, and that he is therefore responsible for her subsequent suicide. Very carefully, he plots his revenge.
Mommy's boy Juantxo is engaged. Dragged to the party by his friends Konradin and Paco, he loses his expensive wedding ring inside the body of a prostitute. Mafioso whorehouse owner Villambrosa finds the ring. Meanwhile Villambrosa's rival gangster Souza sends femme fatale Fatima to check things out. Juantxo and his friends are trying to get the ring back and in the process get involved in the war between gangs.
Behind the scenes of the theater, while the last performance has just ended, the comedian returns to his box.
Lena disappears mysteriously during the winter of 1976. This is the last stop on a journey that begins in colonial Mozambique on new year's eve at 1957 gives way to 1958. Ningo, a black boy brought up by Lena's parents, and her childhood friend, comes to Lisbon to help find her, at the request of Lena's mother. Using the letters that Lena has left behind as a testament to her life, in wich she has rebelled against the challenged the powers that be, Ningo discovers the identity of her kidnapper - Jorge Matos - a former secret policeman who has followed her from Lourenço Marques, motivated by morbid desire. Lena's kidnapper dies from two inexplicable snake bites to the neck, in accordance with a legend and ritual that had been part of Lena and Ningo's childhood.
American actor-director Arnold Barkus made this low-budget French film, a comedy set in New York, with scenes taking place in Chinatown, in a Franco-Greek cabaret, and on the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn-born Max suspects his girlfriend Sophia has been cheating on him. His French pal Jean and a young woman, Vita, step in with a scheme to get back at Sophia, a character who is never seen during the entire film. Included is a parody of the Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter (1978).
When novelist Alessandro Battavia commits suicide, a taxi driver named Evangile and her brother Nord believe they are characters imagined in a novel, probably one written by God.
In this French Canadian thriller, an actress wins the role of a murder victim in a film based on the true story of an unsolved crime. She discovers her neighbor was the lover of the woman who was murdered in real life -- and is still a suspect.
Cristina is twenty years old. Her father was declared missing in action during the war in Angola many years before. One day in church the girl meets a man about fifty years old who tries various times, unsuccessfully, to make the sign of the cross. The man is called Cristovão. A few days later the two meet again. The man offers to help her look for her father. A relationship based on memories and confessions is formed between them. But soon they each return to their own solitude.
Catarina Menezes is a bisexual TV reporter who decides to have a child on her own and chooses Spanish humanitarian doctor Rafael to father the child, setting up an elaborate charade to lure him into her bed. When Catarina reveals her pregnancy, though, her current live-in girlfriend doesn't take to it kindly and promises to make Catarina's life hell; to make matters worse, Rafael finds out her true identity and comes to Lisbon to see her. And Catarina's sole refuge is in the arms of fellow journalist Francisco, her professional relationship slowly becoming a romantic one.
Death never gives back what it takes. Only sometimes change one life for other
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
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.
Benito González is a flamboyant engineer in Melilla, with a brash and pushy personality. His dream is to build the tallest building ever in the region. After his girlfriend leaves him, he devotes himself entirely to his ambitions, deciding to let nothing get in his way. He marries the daughter of a billionaire, intending to use her father's money to realise his project. Benito waltzes his way through a career of excess, fetishes and deceptions, but the personal conflicts he unleashes ultimately send his life spiraling down to disaster.
A delightfully classic French comedy of high sophistication and light hearted wit, that in the end suffers for it. This is immensely watchable simply for the presence of Maria De Medeiros, the central two of the film are captivating. What spoils it is the stereotypical and under developed second characters and an overly wistful outlook. But I defy any man watching this film not to fall madly for Aimee and everyone will cherish the scenes between Aimee and Maurice.
A musical fable inspired by Plato’s Symposium. In a shameless speech, Alcibiades, a prominent young Athenian aristocrat, propounds his strategies to seduce the old philosopher, Socrates. He believes that the wisdom and knowledge he imagines Socrates has, can be transmitted via physical contact.
In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lázaro, Marta, Maria, Adão, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.
While traveling in Paris, author Henry Miller and his wife, June, meet Anais Nin, and sexual sparks fly as Nin starts an affair with the openly bisexual June. When June is forced to return to the U.S., she gives Nin her blessing to sleep with her husband. Then, when June returns to France, an unexpected, and sometimes contentious, threesome forms.
Laura lives in the country with her considerably older husband. When Nuno, her brother who study in Lisbon, pays a visit, he realizes that his sister does not have a happy life. He initiates a friendship with a worker on the farm. The circumstances turn Laura and Nuno against each other... Portrays the repressed sexuality and homosexual desire in a rural setting and elliptically and delicately the small farming community that serves as the backdrop for the impossible relationships pursued by Laura and her brother.
Constance is a young lady who likes to read – and who likes to dream while reading - to imagine, to create images. This is what she does for «La Lectrice», a novel which tells the adventures of Marie, a young lady who likes reading so much that she decides to make a profession of it. Selected texts, Provence in wintertime, different neighbourhoods. Deviations from fiction, secret itinaries. An imaginary space penetrates the space of the town, whose streets Marie stries along, while Constance devours novel. The unknown lies behind each word.
Dominican friar Etienne de Bourbon visits a 13th-century French village in search of heretics for the Inquisition. Despite the opposition of the local priest and the indifference of the villagers, he finds a seemingly perfect suspect: a young woman who lives in a forest outside the village and cures people with herbs and folk remedies. In the process, he discovers the cult of the greyhound "Saint" Guinefort, and confronts his own troubled past.
Set four years after the Portuguese revolution and the simultaneous loss of the Portuguese empire in Africa, the story concerns a director who sells guns to finance his play.
In a specialized, hermetic drama about love won and lost, not necessarily by the same individuals, novice director Christine Laurent has focused on the backstage melodramas of an opera company. The conductor for an upcoming performance of the Marriage of Figaro has his mind and heart on other matters -- an entrancing diva who keeps him enraptured with her presence and voice. In the meantime, he finds fault with his cast members who cannot, of course, measure up to the woman of his dreams. As singers encounter one problem or another, it is clear that something has to be done about the conductor. Director Laurent designed costumes for both theater and opera, giving her some insight into the venue.
Film comprised of six vignettes each illustrating one aspect of life in the French capital, each set in a different area of the city.
The shady side of an Italian textile trade in northern Germany is the subject of this slow-paced but atmospheric drama featuring Alberto Sordi as Totonno, a low-level, petty criminal anxious to move up a somewhat crooked ladder. Rising to the rank of the "dons" -- Don Raffaele (Carmine Ippolito) or Don Gennaro (Pasquale Cenammo) -- is not an easy task, as Totonno is about to find out. In the meantime, Paula (Belinda Lee) provides a romantic distraction, and another would-be entrepreneur opts for the straight and narrow. This uneven feature offers some colorful performances but the sum is less convincing than its parts.
