10 ½ captures the story of Tommy, a ten and a half
years-old wild child. Tommy is found severely beaten and
unconscious in a vacant lot. Already well-known by social
services despite his young age, he is sent to ‘Le
Tremplin’, a new youth...
Three young delinquents driving a van pick up a woman they
find at the side of the road and take her to the beach for a
day of amoral pursuits. Seemingly bored after this day, they
decide to put her on trial together...
An early, and relatively lesser known, masterpiece from
Kitano Takeshi. Doing his regular round of garbage pickup,
deaf-mute Shigeru one day finds an abandoned surf board. He
brings it home and fixes it, then goes to the beach and
starts practicing. Against all odds,...
Aayesh is a lonely man. He works as a morgue security guard.
One day his daily routine is altered for 10 minutes, but
brings about a significant change.
A short film divided into two parallel stories. In Afternoon
River, Grace, a waitress in a Malaysian/Chinese restaurant
tries to go through her mundane everyday work while ignoring
the incessant ringing of her cell phone. In Evening Sky, the
tomboyish Lai Fun seeks justice...
Alice, somewhere between his short, exclusively animated
films and later ones with more acting, and considered by
some critics to be his best movies, is an excellent
introduction to Švankmajer’s work.
„I would like to transpose the world of Alice when she is
awake (without...
Daniel Schwartz is a comedian. Quite trash. He is on tour
all over France. It is a big success. But Daniel is tired
and lonely. Is there a woman ready to share his loneliness?
A woman or two?
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Family and friendship. Love
and warmth. Joy and sadness. Hope and despair.
Companionship. Loneliness. A birth. A death. Time passes…
In London a happily married, middle-aged couple is visited
by a number of unhappy and lonely friends who use them...
Wang Quan'an's Apart Together was the curtain raiser of this
year Berlinale, and it went on to also win a Silver Bear for
best screenplay. An award the film secured itself with
merit, as the ever-challenging theme of the division between
China and Taiwan...
With Apartment #5C, Raphaël Nadjari continues in the vein
of his previous movie, I Am Josh Polonski's Brother. He
returns to his favourite themes (Judaism, family, repressed
desire), to his particular taste for improvisation, as well
as to his pet actor, Richard Edson, a...
“With Armadillo, I was curious to explore how the micro
level of war – where human interaction takes place –
affects one of the greatest conflicts of our time. In the
early research for the project, I was surprised that the
majority of those...
Autopsy is a TV drama set in present-day Slovak countryside
revealing the complex relationships between a grandfather,
his daughter-in-law and his grandson. While an ambulance is
rushing to the village to save a heart-attack victim, the
author examines the dismal emotional and financial state of
people...
"Avanim" is the Hebrew word for "stones", which are an
important part of Jewish culture and religion. For example,
the Ten Commandments were inscribed on two stone tablets.
Stones are thrown at someone when they have been sentenced
to death. Yet another example: The...
The Azyl Awards have been staged annually at International
Film Festival Bratislava since 2005. During the six years of
its existence, the Azyl festival has showcased to the public
more than 300 films within two competition sections. This
year’s edition features 40 short films...
Four countries and four babies, from birth to their very
first steps. Their names are Ponijao, Bayarjargal, Mari and
Hattie, and they live in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan and the
United States. Babies invites us simultaneously into four
very different cultures, capturing the funniest, most
carefree...
If politics were to come back, It could only be from its
savage and disreputable fringe. Then, a muffled rumor shall
arise when that road is heard: “We are scum, we are
barbarians!” Alain Brossant, The Infinitive Resistance
Constantinople, 1910. Too many stray dogs in the streets.
The newly installed government calls in European specialists
to get rid of the dogs, before deciding, finally, to deport
30 000 of them on a desert island, off the coast of the
city. Through both...
Berik, a short drama about friendship and understanding,
takes place in Semey, Kazakhstan. Berik, 33, blind and
deformed due to radiation poisoning, spends his days at home
alone, while his brother is at work. That is until Adil, 11,
the smallest and least popular...
“El Zapa”, a young locksmith that lives a simple life in
Corrientes region, gets involved in a robbery and, in order
to avoid prison, is forced to leave his home and family and
is sent to Buenos Aires province, recommended to enter the
Buenos...
No matter how the weather is. Even if Patagonia’s glaciers
have covered the horizon, even if what used to be has been
buried by snow. The past is here, engraved in Santiago’s
heart. It cannot be forgotten. The pain never fades away, it
is...
Based on a novel by the notable Brazilian musician Chico
Buarque, Carvalho’s quietly spellbinding adaptation
follows José Costa, a ghostwriter attending a symposium in
Istanbul who is unexpectedly re-routed, on his return home,
to Budapest, where his plane is forced to make an emergency
landing....
In Argentina, more than eight thousand people die every year
in road accidents. Behind every tragedy there is an
industry, supported by the compensations of insurance
companies and the weakness of the law. Sosa, is a lawyer who
moves through emergency rooms of public...
If the couple featured in Richard Linklater’s Before
Sunrise and Before Sunset got married, grew old, divorced
and reunited, the resulting confrontation would probably
look a lot like Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy.
Possibly the Iranian director’s most accessible work, this
elegant, stream-of-consciousness movie takes place...
City of Life is an urban drama revolving around three
parallel lives, amongst many cultures in Dubai. A privileged
young male Emirati at odds with his cultural identity and
his less fortunate street smart friend; a disillusioned
Indian taxi driver who bears an uncanny...
One night, Mariana and Rodrigo, a young upper middle class
couple who’s about to get married, find 7 year-old Karina
on the beach. She ran away from her family and somehow
explains she’s living in an environment of family abuse.
The couple decides to...
“Cold Weather begins as a movie about family. Doug and
Gail, a brother and sister who have been apart for a long
time, are forced get to know each other again as young
adults. Before anything out of the ordinary happens we get
know...
Surrealist Jan Švankmajer’s third feature portrays human
beings as a society caught up in bizarre methods of
gratifying its existential-erotic needs. A dark comedy about
people who are only driven by the “pleasure principle”,
and consequently about freedom. A peculiar grotesque
illustration of the current...
Set on Colombia’s Pacific coast, El vuelco del cangrejo
tells the story of both the drama of a young man, trying to
flee his past, and the upcoming clash between a remote
village and modernity, represented by two intruding
foreigners.
“It sounds cliched, but...
With its grained black and white, 16mm, and image, Pablo
Trapero’s first feature is an essential piece for
understanding the Argentinean New Cinema. The film
constructs a new form of neo-realism following the main
character, “el Rulo”, a 50-year-old ex-bass player from
a famous 1970's...
As part of the National Missile Defense Project, the U.S.
government made an official request to its Czech counterpart
in January 2007 for permission to install a missile-defense
radar system in a military zone southwest of Prague. For
many Czechs, the possible presence of...
A study of “self-creation” confirming Švankmajer’s
ability to breathe life into inanimate matter, such as
modelling clay, in order to masterfully materialise his
visions.
Based on a novella by Thomas Mann of the same name, Death in
Venice is, in my view, one of the best film adaptations of
literary works ever made. (...) While the protagonist in the
novella is an author, Visconti changed his profession...
Ariel Kleitman is a young Australian director, but his
seventh short film takes place in… a Russian submarine.
The film is, at the beginning, as virile as Steven
Seagal’s films (Ariel’s first cinematic shock), but, at
the end, it drifts to surrealism and romanticism....
A quiet young man returns to the wild, isolated landscape of
the Delta. It is a labyrinth of waterways, small islands and
over-grown vegetation, where the villagers are cut off from
the outside world. The young man, who has been away since
early childhood,...
Aseela’s childhood is not over yet; she was just starting
her life. Now her life has been stolen. Doll is an
experimental film made with over 4 000 still images that
addresses the issue of the marriage of minors.
The Dooman River marks the boundary between China and North
Korea. In this region where the climate is harsh, the river
is covered with ice during long months and separates the
starving and the poor. Many Korean people attempt to flee
from their country...
A modern horror film that, without using any fancy props,
manages to furnish an original view on everyday commonplace
situations, and evoke the sense of fear only a child can
truly experience. Grand Prix from the 1985 Oberhausen
festival.
How do children on five continents see themselves? To find
out, Gilles Porte travelled to twenty countries with a sheet
of glass and a big felt pen, and invited hundreds of
children to draw their self-portraits on the transparent
canvas. The camera closely recorded...
A minimalist study in maximum violence, Gianfranco Rosi's El
Sicario Room 164 offers viewers the rare chance to meet a
Mexican narco hitman and to live to tell the tale. Based on
a Harper's article by Charles Bowden, this pared-down
portrait of a repentant...
The three short stories, Wings, Whip and House, are an
ironic protest against the dullness of life and the vicious
circle in which we sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, find
ourselves. Švankmajer’s only film to use drawing and
animation exclusively.
“A young boy learns to play the piano in a universe of
absurdity”, says the synopsis of Venice Film Festival
catalogue. Well, if this plain sentence is not exactly
wrong, it’s also miles away from accurately reporting the
experience of David OReilly’s new irreverent...
A mother waits with her two young children in a restaurant
by the sea for her order. The children quarrel and play, the
mother looks tired and absent. Acted with beautiful
naturalness (an actress with her own children), this is a
penetrating family drama...
In the third film in his suite of documentaries about a poor
Peruvian family, Mikael Wiström - together with Alberto
Herskovits - gives us a unique look into the life of one of
the world's many guest workers. Mamma Naty goes to Spain...
Multi-layered, unique and captivatingly imaginative
rendition of the Faustian myth. The main motif is
temptation, manipulation and the inability to escape from
angst, and the surrender to evil which makes its way
inconspicuously into our everyday lives. Utilising his
typical method of combining live acting...
Have you ever been so hungry you could eat anything at all?
Another surrealist short film by the Czech master, divided
into three chapters (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner).
A relentlessly grim and mesmerizing film noir, Force of Evil
presents a world thoroughly steeped in corruption. Joe Morse
is a powerful Wall Street lawyer who grew up on the streets
but has risen to a place of importance. A man whose face...
Newly arrived at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, ex-boxer
Robert Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is swiftly ordered by
his superior officers to get back in the ring and defend the
honor of the regiment. But Prewitt has hung up his gloves
for good and refuses,...
In 1582, Hideyoshi Toyotomi directs Japan’s destiny with
extreme cruelty without hiding his plans for expansion. His
rise to power was a result of treason that put an end to
General Nobunaga Oda, and his secret is hidden in a
mysterious box. Ishikawa Goemon,...
Goodbye, How Are You? is a superb satirical documentary
detailing a fractured society with a narration taken from
the Serbian convention of dry aphorisms to address the
effects of war and widespread political corruption. Aided
and abetted by a witty tour guide opting to...
Rod Steiger is ferocious as a scheming land developer in
Francesco Rosi’s Hands Over the City, a blistering work of
social realism and the winner of the 1963 Venice Film
Festival Golden Lion. This expose of the politically driven
real-estate speculation that has devastated...
On the sun-drenched island of Haiti at the end of the
70’s, foreigners idle away their vacations in the
palm-fringed paradise of the beach hotels. Brenda, Ellen and
Sue, three North American women, converge on the island
looking for flirtation, relaxation and respite from...
“I don’t want to stay here anymore!” says Martina to
her mother via webcam in an internet café near Lake
Constance. Meanwhile, her mother in Slovakia tries to calm
down her daughter. After all, they need the money. Martina
is working as a home...
Visitors from a distant place appear in the misty swamps of
Northern Finland. As harmless as they are, their foreign
presence unwittingly disrupts the pace of local habits. They
have come to look for berries, an activity that all of a
sudden seems to...
Three brothers, Abe, Ben and Josh work together in a Lower
East Side fabric shop and seem to be leading quiet lives
until Josh is suddenly gunned down in front of Abe.
Determined to understand the mystery of his brother's death,
Abe is progressively...
In the year of the Shanghai World Expo, leading Chinese
filmmaker Jia Zhangke, who was the initiator of the digital
renovation of Chinese cinema, was asked to make a film about
the city that more than any other encapsulates the
unstoppable advancement of China...
From Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson,
comes Inside Job, the first film to expose the shocking
truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global
financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted
in millions of people losing their homes and...
Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level
radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed
in interim storages, which are vulnerable to natural or
man-made disasters. In Finland the world's first permanent
repository is being hewn out of solid rock that...
Contrary to what its name indicates, Kazak Productions is a
young French production company based in Paris. It was
funded in 2007 by Jean-Christophe Reymond. In no more than
three years of existence, Kazak Productions completed about
15 short fiction films and 4 documentaries...
This documentary film focuses on the issue of people living
on the fringe of society. The film captures the lives of two
homeless people in Banská Bystrica, in whose company the
viewer can discover the environment and the situations in
which homeless people usually...
It’s rare for Sun-woo to say anything other than “I’m
sorry”. After messing up the rendezvous with his
girlfriend and making the usual promises that it won’t
happen again, he still ends up at the next drinking session
anyway. It’s as if you can...
Johanna, a young drug addict, falls into a deep coma after
an accident. Doctors miraculously manage to save her from
death's doorstep. Touched by grace, Johanna cures patients
by offering her body. The head doctor is frustrated by her
continued rejection of him and...
Alexandru Solomon is the most prominent of Romania's quiet
crusaders, a muckraker who understands that disgust is
sometimes better conveyed through intelligent irony rather
than bombast. In olden days, robber barons paid off
politicians rather than enter politics themselves, but now
the "heroes of triumphant...
An afternoon at the beach. Young girls are working
intensively on getting a sun tan whilst boys of the same age
are desperately trying to gain their attention. Not far
away, an aqua-aerobics group takes a class in the sea while
a swarm of...
Nicaragua is the new Florida, seen by burnt-out Baby Boomers
as their cheap ticket to retirement paradise. Three naïve
Americans figure they’ve got it made with their
mega-resort development plans for a bucolic fishing village
on the southern coast. There’s just one small problem:...
Laura is 25 years old. She’s a journalist, she’s single
and lives in a small apartment in Mexico City. After a
series of short-lived affairs, Laura meets Arturo. After the
first time they make love, she is left deeply unsettled.
They embark on an...
A series of animations based on the sketchbook drawings by
Leonardo, which are gradually being transformed into
real-world footage of various ordinary events from 1972. The
dazzling contrasts seems to suggest that the modern-day
world is not so far removed from Leonardo’s times.
1st Part
In 1988, Loïk Le Floch-Prigent and Alfred Sirven become
the chief executives at the oil company Elf. They discover a
company that runs on kickbacks: in exchange for the oil
rights, Elf makes handsome but discreet payoffs to the
leaders of African nations....
After Julia, a young university student (without any
previous criminal record), is sent to prison for the murder
of her lover, she gives birth to a son, Tomás. Bringing up
a child in jail is difficult, but Julia understands that the
only thing that...
The Horáks long to have a child. One day Mr. Horák digs
up a tree stump in the backyard that looks like a baby,
cleans it up with a chisel and presents it to his wife, who
names it Otík. When she starts treating...
Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a
factory and lives with her father in an old house in
Santiago, Chile. The action takes place on December 2006,
during the weeks that take place from the ex-dictator
Pinochet’s funeral to...
Every year, Jason, Alex, and newly married Mark and Karen
leave New York for a North Carolina beach house to reconnect
and relax. But this year is different: Jason has been
diagnosed with an aggressive terminal cancer, repurposing
their trip as a meaningful—yet uncertain—farewell.
Sharing...
Young Berlot suffers from a recurrent dream in which
hospital orderlies attempt to strap him into a
straightjacket. The dream ends with his waking up in a
destroyed room. After his mother’s funeral, Berlot meets a
certain marquis in a pub and accepts an...
He looked like just another day labourer from the streets,
but he turned out to be Machete, a legendary ex-federal
officer. Left for dead after clashing with notorious Mexican
drug kingpin Torrez, Machete has escaped to Texas, trying to
forget his past. But what...
Yelena and Nikolay Renard, new, promising voices in Russian
cinema, have made fiction out of a real-life story, using a
minimal plot that focuses on the complicated relationship
between a mother and her obese forty-year-old son.
“She cooks and bathes him — he is...
A slaughterhouse worker (Gérard Depardieu), heavy and
reticent, has just turned sixty and his colleagues have
organized a farewell party to celebrate his retirement. The
man began his working life at the age of sixteen; he has
never lost a job, or been off...
Michael Clayton handles all of the dirty work for a major
New York law firm, skirting through loopholes for ethically
questionable clients. But when a fellow lawyer decides to
turn on the very firm they were hired to clean up for,
Clayton finds himself...
A look at life on the Mediterranean borders of Europe, where
tourists try to relax while "illegal" immigrants struggle to
get a chance for a better life.
Based on the immensely popular novel by Alek Popov, Mission:
London is a comedy of errors set in the Bulgarian embassy in
London. The country has just joined the EU, and
president’s wife wants to arrange a celebration and invite
Queen Elisabeth herself. To...
A highly admired maverick producer known for making incisive
films on tight budgets, Ingrid Veninger has more recently
emerged as a skilled director in her own right. (…) In
Modra, we meet two restless teens who barely know each
other: the sunny, quietly confident...
Today, Mongolia has the lowest population density in the
world. A vast and little populated country with ancient
history that raises the curiosity of many people. Among
them, a bunch of friends who set out on an expedition to
seek adventure on the most...
A troubled ex-soldier scarred by an unnamed conflict has
lost all human contact with the people in his rural
community. He tries unsuccessfully to make a connection with
the people working alongside him during the potato harvest
but they are too wary of the...
A blend of superlative cinematic ingredients, Never Let Me
Go has the pedigree of being adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s
popular novel, described by Time magazine as the best of the
decade. Its lush pastoral setting provides an ironic
background as it slowly reveals itself...
“We cannot forget our dead”, says a voice in Nostalgia
de la Luz, meaning that it is our duty to remember them. How
can one forget a son murdered by a dictatorial power?
Fortunately, or regretfully, the past is hard to kill, and
even...
A monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the
1990s. Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with
their Muslim brothers. When a crew of foreign workers is
massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps
though the region. The army offers...
Onemanshow is a short movie about an artist who is trying to
raise money for his projects. Discouraged by red-tapism of
the government machinery, he understands that he should rely
on nobody but himself. The film parodies the absurd,
implacable bureaucracy and its inefficient...
After the festival success of his films Here We Are and The
Border, documentary filmmaker Jaro Vojtek returns with the
short social documentary Out of Round. The protagonist is a
Roma man called Jožo/Fero whose addiction has taken
everything from him and pushed him...
Paris by night, the entrance of a nightclub. A bouncer is at
work, deciding who is allowed to enter and who has to stay
outside. Virgil Vernier’s documentary explores in a
fascinating steady shot social criteria of selection and
power relations.
It is late summer on the coast of Normandy where the beaches
are broad and the weather unpredictable. As always, the
North Atlantic is far too cold for anyone used to swimming
in the soothing warmth of tropic seas, but the afternoon sun
is...
The short documentary Petržalka Identity is a follow-up to
an exhibition of the same name, presented by Juraj Chlpík
on Bratislava’s New Bridge in 2006. With its 130,000
inhabitants, Petržalka is the biggest neighborhood in
Bratislava. Three generations have grown up here since it
was...
Peter, who is just released from prison, finds that his
sister has become the proud (but surrogate) mother of a baby
boy. But the wild Maya is the real mother of the child and
wants him back. Peter soon falls in love with...
Winner of the best screenplay award at Cannes Film Festival,
Poetry is another sensitive and dense character study by
Korean master Lee Chang-dong. The protagonist is Mi-ja, an
eccentric old lady who lives in a provincial town along with
her teenager grandson. One day,...
In what is left of the city of Jaffa, a man about to lose
his house contemplates his fate. Meanwhile two women remain
tied to their homes. Cats scrabbling her front door, one
finds solace feeding her old mother, until her house is
taken...
The Soviet Army invaded Romania in 1944, turning the country
into a dictatorship. As the regime grew increasingly
repressive, resistance groups multiplied, springing up in
the Romanian mountains where many had been driven and taking
on the might of the Russian military in forests...
Velicanu considers himself fulfilled. He has money, a new
villa, he is married for the second time to a young woman
with whom he has a baby and has a son from his first
marriage. Before the holidays, he has to leave his...
The actors from Divado z Pasáže (Theatre from the
Passage) are living their dream lives and will not let
anybody effect their happiness. They were enabled to step
out of their anonymous existence in institutions for
individual with mental disabilities and given the chance to
show...
Torocco takes its inspiration from a short story published
in 1922 by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the writer from two of whose
tales director Akira Kurosawa formed his legendary Rashomon.
Yumiko, with sons Atsushi and Toki, travels from her home in
Tokyo with the ashes of...
At a soiree celebrating the construction's end of a highway
with the political elite, the contractor, a corrupt mogul
named Vincent Padovani, willingly indulges in the sort of
debauchery that is permissible only in the highest social
circles. Gradually, as alcohol does effect the...
The grandmother (the actress is the filmmaker’s actual
grandmother) of a large, extended family is invited to
become the matron of honor at her niece’s wedding in her
far-away, native hometown. And so, the adventure begins as
the whole clan hits the road in...
