Ms. Katarína Kolníková, the long-term icon of Radošina
Naive Theatre and one of the most outstanding actresses of
not only Radošina but also Slovak professional drama scene,
was born ninety years ago (April 20, 1921 in Radošina; died
on May 28, 2006, in Radošina)....
17 teenage girls from the Breton seaside town of Lorient
take together an unexpected decision that will change their
peaceful lives and leave them misunderstood by the boys and
adults around them: they decide to get pregnant all at the
same time. Camille is...
The film follows the fates of several youngsters who decided
at an early age – some as young as 11, 12 or 13 – to
leave home, only to end up living on the streets temporarily
or permanently. As they say, “the street...
Nader and Simin argue about living abroad. Simin prefers to
leave Iran to provide better opportunities for their only
daughter, Termeh. Nader refuses to go because he thinks he
must stay in Iran and take care of his father who suffers
from Alzheimer’s. Simin...
Road movie about a goat shepherd Jacinto (Gabino Rodriguez)
from the area of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, who embarks on a
journey to North America. His only compass is the picture of
a snow-covered mountain saddle on a key chain pendant he has
found...
A dark but romantic comedy on natural things with a
supernatural twist. A fresh high school graduate Kitka seems
unable to escape from the shadow of death and the smell of
funerals. Her father is a sculptor who earns a living by
carving out...
A film poem about a continent at night, a culture on which
the sun’s going down though it stays hyper alert at the
same time. Often somewhat self-obsessively,
“Abendland” sees itself as the crown of human
civilization while its service economy is undergoing rapid
growth...
Czech film Šakalí léta (Big Beat) à la Polish art, the
film takes us to a provincial town near Gdańsk in 1981.
Following protests triggered by Solidarity, government
imposes a curfew on the town and expects the people to shut
up and obey. But...
Two trips, four fates. Mr. Nakata drives from Tokyo to
Toyota City to hand in his notice. Along the way he stops to
a mysterious hitchhiker Ellen. They know practically nothing
about each other. They travel together southward to the
Umikongo coast. The contrast...
The story begins to unfold in the fall of 1989 at the Biely
Potok train station in the Jeseníky mountains where Alois
Nebel works as a train dispatcher. He is a loner of few
words who is possessed by strange fog every now...
A love grows from a chance encounter between Chris and
Aurore. They are twenty years old and their passion is
exclusive. It‘s a beautiful love story like you see in the
movies... But then Aurore discovers that Chris is a killer.
Will she continue...
Two shots fired in the middle of the night disrupt Mary’s
life. The faceless killers just shot her husband and son
dead, leaving her alone and desperate. A police officer in
the Toronto district, Mary chooses the path of revenge and
chases down the...
A compelling story of a woman tested by life, full of
passion, cruelty of fate and unrestrained love. Set
somewhere in southern Slovakia, a secluded place stowed away
amidst apricot orchards, the film will suck the viewers into
the whirl of three men’s passion...
After a several-year hiatus, renowned South Korean filmmaker
Ki-duk Kim returns to the screen with his frank, even
heartrending confession Arirang. Named after a Korean song
sung by those who feel sad, the director’s lament follows
his own path of a self-taught filmmaker who...
The feature debut of Nikita Mikhalkov arguably represents
the most successful marriage of the traditional Soviet genre
of Red Western with its equally traditional American
prototype. Mikhalkov took the most basic conventions of the
Western and Red Western; he then combined and contrasted
them. In...
The film describes a relationship between a daughter and her
father in two different time frames. In the present, the
adult daughter takes care of her old father in a room
divided into two sections of different colours. She dwells
in the blue area...
Indian documentary about fascination with Indian film. A
grandiose cinematic potpourri on why Bollywood films attract
millions of viewers to cinemas and glue dozens of millions
to TV screens and why their popularity seems to be
ever-growing. Produced by famous director Shekhar Kapur
(Elizabeth, 1998),...
Aneta a Vašek are in love but a snake has sneaked between
them. Literally. Aneta is a student at the veterinary
faculty while Vašek studies medicine. Aneta loves her four
meter-long pet python but it scares Vašek to death. Vašek
gives Aneta an ultimatum: either...
Francesko is the only female chimney sweep in Estonia. She
walks from door to door, helping people to be safe and their
houses to “breathe”. In her mind, breathing and soul are
interconnected. Francesko is a peculiar woman, a realist who
takes her own...
Serving the fourth year of his murder sentence in a prison
for juvenile delinquents, 19 year-old Roman Kogler (Thomas
Schubert) who grew up parentless in an orphanage awaits his
parole verdict. As a prisoner he got a job in a Vienna
funeral parlour; after...
Former bodyguard and rowdy Jean-Marc Calvet used to live
violently on the dark side. Today he is a respected painter
whose $20,000 canvasses feature hundreds of small demons
with distinct lips and eyes interconnected with motives of
destruction and suffering. The documentary captures this
controversial...
All kinds of people are waiting in seven different queues.
The first person of each queue becomes the last of the next
one, thus creating an enormous human chain. Director Giorgos
Zois: “People standing in line; all in order. Everyone is
starving for something:...
Ambitious television moderator and director Hana senses an
opportunity in the story of once famous actor Juraj Kramer
who is bound to a wheelchair after a stroke. She decides to
shoot a documentary about him. Gradually putting the puzzle
of his life together, she...
If someone in Slovakia wanted to find perfect halušky or
pirohy, people would certainly call him a nut job. But that
did not stop a certain American who set his mind on finding
the perfect chicken wings; he even found someone to finance
his...
Arguably one of the best “Sauerkraut” Westerns, the film
is based on the politically acceptable novel The Deerslayer
by James Fenimore Cooper and set in the period of conquering
the Wild West. It was shot on location in former Yugoslavia
and stars the Serbian...
Cinema Komunisto takes us on a journey through the crumbling
remains of Tito’s film industry, exploring the rise and
fall of the cinematic illusion called Yugoslavia. Using rare
footage from dozens of forgotten Yugoslav films as well as
never-before-seen archive material from film sets...
Marisa, a 20-year old German girl, hates foreigners, Jews,
cops and everyone she blames for the decline of her country.
She provokes, drinks and fights, and is determined that her
next tattoo will be a portrait of Adolf Hitler. The only
place she feels...
“You’re invisible!” Can there be a worse judgment on
an actress? Young Fine definitely lacks self-confidence but
when renowned director Kaspar Friedmann appears at the drama
school and casts Fine for her first main role, nobody
understands his motivation, least of all Fine herself....
Having survived the massacre of her family, a young girl,
Koh Reh, must make a long journey through the horrors of the
East-Burmese jungle to the Salween River, beyond which lies
the freedom of Thailand. But will be her late father’s
enduring love and...
The film deals with how superstitions and occult power bind
members of a society between them and to the past through
daily life, rituals and objects; it explores imagination,
feeling and freedom of individuals and their relation to the
universal. It is composed of...
Alex is single and at a crossroad in her life as she watches
her close friends settle down, get married, and have kids.
Not-too-recently out of a relationship, she reacts to her
emotional instability with promiscuity, clinging to
immediate carnal satisfactions to bide her...
A political documentary on black holes within the Slovak
judiciary system and on the condition of law enforceability
in Slovakia. Peeking behind the gown of Slovak courts of
law, this cinematic essay examines the motives of power that
has withdrawn to seclusion but still...
Inspired by the City of San Francisco and its people, Dust
and Glitter is a simple story about two people of different
backgrounds who live next to each other but do not
communicate directly. Magda is a young naive girl fascinated
by the city...
Nominated for the Academy Award, the film is devoted to the
phenomenon of street art. Despite the constant controversy
over whether it is art or vandalism, street art is arguably
the most massive antisocial movement since punk and the most
fashionable art genre today....
Freely inspired by Goethe’s story, Alexander Sokurov
radically reinterprets the myth. Faust is a thinker, a rebel
and a pioneer, but also an anonymous human made of flesh and
blood driven by inner impulses of greed and lust. After
Moloch (Hitler), Taurus (Lenin) and...
A few years ago when the developed world was booming the
bankers and stockbrokers thought the gravy train would never
end. No country epitomized this rise and fall better than
Iceland. The country was an economic supernova, too rich to
fail and totally incorruptible....
It seems that Estonia is full of drunkards. Eight year-old
Lucia (played beautifully by Kerttu-Killu Grenman) is a bit
like Pippi Longstocking. She lives in a small Estonian town
with parents who do not give her much care. Her father is a
gravedigger and...
Alain (played magnificently by Philippe Torreton) has a
family, a job, a nice house and a normal life. One night the
police break in and handcuff him and his wife on charges of
the most dreadful of crimes: paedophilia. They undergo
intense psychological torture...
The drama marks the return of the most distinctive
contemporary Slovak director Martin Šulík to feature films
after a five-year creative hiatus and confirms his
reputation of an original filmmaker with pronounced views
who refuses to kowtow to the popular taste and majority
sentiments. This...
Hamdi, a wig seller in a run-down district of Istanbul, is
desperately lonely. He spends his days and nights in store,
which is also his home, chain-smoking and staring out of his
window at a prostitute dressed in red who stands on the
pavement...
At only 16, Hanna already has the strength, the stamina and
the smarts of a soldier. She grew up in the wilderness of
northern Finland, being raised by her widowed father Erik, a
former CIA agent who trained her to be the perfect...
One of the few Romanian films that do not deal with life
endings, this bittersweet romantic comedy nominated for the
European Film Award was among top ten most popular films at
this year’s Karlovy Vary IFF. The brilliantly crafted
human interest story centres on...
An intimate drama about the clash of dreams of different
generations. Imrich is building a house for his daughter
Eva, hoping that the house would forever seal their family
bond. There is another unfinished house on the lot; it was
built for Eva’s older...
West Germany, early 1960s. Star crossed university lovers
Bern and Gudrun begin a lifelong affair in the stifling
atmosphere of provincial Germany. Bent on challenging the
establishment, they become part of the global uprising,
joining forces with leftist writers and political activists.
By the end...
Shaped like a reverse pyramid, the building of Slovak Radio
in Bratislava is a place surrounded by many urban myths. It
is here that director Peter Magát decided to set his film
that forms part of the currently prepared feature horror
omnibus Strach (Fear)....
It is 1999 and a platoon of British minesweepers employed by
the Taliban is working near Kandahar, Afghanistan. The first
conflict arises when a platoon commander Richard Lee wants
to pee and there is a woman in sight. The terrain is all
mined up...
Set in the People’s Republic of China, told from a unique
perspective and rendered in a daring cinematic language, the
film consists of nine scenes that unfold in the grey area
between black and white, where national politics and
strategies have unforeseen consequences on...
Rubén is a lonely truck driver who has been covering for
years the motorway from Paraguay to Buenos Aires, carrying
wood. But today’s journey will be different. Near
Asunción, he picks up Jacinta on her way to Buenos Aires in
search of a job. To...
Former author and bohemian Marcel Marx (André Wilms) lives
in voluntary exile in the French port town of Le Havre in
the company of his wife Arletta (Kati Outinen) and
their dog Lajka. He abandoned his dreams of a great
literary breakthrough and became a bootblack....
Lemonade Joe was made in 1964, during the exuberant period
in Czechoslovakia filled with the hope that society was
breaking free of the ideological grip of the 1950s and
heading towards more freedom. The very choice of the genres
of Western and satirical comedy...
Did you really believe you knew the story of Lidice? It is a
story of ordinary people crushed by history as the result of
an absurd coincidence. The film tells the story of Lidice
through human emotions, especially love that triggered the
tragedy in...
This graduation film is a clever and meditative piece that
both caresses and attacks the senses. Director Naoko Tasaka
said: “An attempt of thinking without language. Point of
view, observation, flexibility ... and surf!”
Biker Res (played by famous Swiss actor Roeland Wiesenekker)
returns from prison and finds a summer job as handyman at
the local campsite, which is not only popular among tourists
but is also a dream place for 33 year-old mentally
challenged Greta. The young...
The film follows the parallel stories of a number of
characters who are trying to change their lives via the
Internet or are simply having fun online. This film is about
love in all its forms – about the inevitable, mystic and
inexplicable love,...
Thrown together in 1981 as a solution to the problem with
the homeless, tenants unable to pay rent and persons deemed
“unable to adapt socially”, Luník IX on the outskirts
of Košice in eastern Slovakia has become the largest Roma
ghetto in central Europe....
Camcorder footage captures two girls – one Israeli and one
American – dressed in corsets and bunny ears, high on
coke, backstage at a Tokyo strip club. Yael films Melissa
giggling, sobbing, heartbreakingly candid. Seven years
later, Melissa remains an unsolved riddle and slowly...
The third part of a six-part omnibus, the film is set in an
alienated city ruled by merciless principles of corporate
society in which a young woman consents to be reduced to
mere human flesh, as it is the only ticket to the...
A variation of an unbelievable but true life story of
Natascha Kampusch. 35-year old Michael lives a modest and
inconspicuous life. He works in an insurance company and is
not in touch with his family. He avoids neighbours who
nevertheless consider him a decent...
A young couple of Gil and Inez who are planning to get
married soon travel to Paris as a tag-along vacation on her
parents’ business trip. Gil is a fledgling writer who
loves Paris and would like to move here after the wedding.
He...
Also a part of the currently prepared feature horror omnibus
Strach [Fear], the film tells a story of a female judge who
is arbitrarily terrorized by a 13-year old boy. His basic
motive is revenge and his main ally a hallucinogenic drug.
The director...
The film is based on the life story of Howard Marks, an
Oxford graduate who became the chief marihuana importer to
Great Britain in the 1960s. He managed to elude law
enforcers for years by pretending to be an MI6 agent and
became a...
Hannah and Violetta make for an odd couple: an elusive
mother and a little girl in search of maternal love; a
flamboyant artist and her reluctant model. When Hannah asks
her daughter if she would like to be her model, Violetta’s
life with her...
New feature documentary by Emmy Award laureates Patrik
Pašš and Matej Mináč brings stories of newly-located
children saved from Czechoslovakia during World War II by
Sir Nicholas Winton as well as comments by young people on
his extraordinary accomplishment. One of the film’s most
powerful...
An ironic insight into a newly-established civic
association. A group of people in their thirties bound
together by identical life experience (all of them were once
adopted) aims to found a non-profit organization that would
promote adoption of children. Their meeting is attended
incognito by...
The Lebanese port town of Tripoli (not to be confused with
the capital of Libya) is teeming with tourists but there is
nothing interesting to be found on the outskirts. Or is
there? Oh yeah, for instance a sad, restrained and modest
confectioner in...
We are used to watching sci-fi movies about global disasters
that are of American production and of a certain
dramaturgical pattern which, almost as a rule, is dictated
by that production. This is a non-American film that
approaches the genre from a different angle....
Athens, a small and quiet junction in the district of
Plato’s Academy with three tobacco stores and a dog.
Stavros owns one of the kiosks. His wife has left him and
refuses to come back; his mother has had a stroke and he...
This film features a rising European film star Alicia
Vikander, the newest laureate of the title European Shooting
Star that is annually awarded at the Berlin IFF by European
Film Promotion. Vikander portrays Katarina, a girl who wants
to go further in life than...
Anton, a mysterious, lost and eccentric young apprentice
arrives at Yakov Fidelman’s antique furniture restoration
workshop. Fidelman is a restoration artist from another age
and another world that slowly vanishes around him. His old
associate’s death leaves him unstable as he deals with
deep financial...
The last part of the Secrets Trilogy, Six Easy Pieces is an
animation about film as the seventh art and the ultimate
synthesis of art and technology. An insight into the
wonderful world of physics through the fantastic eyes of
Reynold Reynolds and his...
On the one hand there are two men in their prime from the
heart of Europe who are aware of the value of their work,
measuring its meaning by help. On the other hand there are
inhabitants of a Zambian village who are...
Johan lives with his wife in the eastern suburb of
Stockholm. Anna lives there too, with her husband and
nine-year old daughter. They are complete strangers to one
another until a car accident – in which Johan causes the
death of the little girl...
A film about Sundays. How do human beings cope with
emptiness in their lives? How do men and women cheat (or not
cheat) their boredom? How do they get busy on that day, the
most conducive to boredom? The film is composed of...
A story of two brothers who venture to America to persuade
another brother who lives there to come back to Romania, the
film forms the middle part of a trilogy that began with The
Prophet, the Gold and the Transylvanians (1977) and finished
with...
Following an intrepid Kolkata detective Rajesh and his
motley band on raids and investigations across India, the
film centres on three compelling cases while enjoying
intimate access to all involved – from a client’s
initial phone call to the finality of a jail cell....
A documentary about one year inside Malpensa international
airport in Milan, a place where bureaucracy and control
procedures put a serious strain on the freedom of
individuals, animals and goods passing through. The airport
is a strategic place where all law enforcement agencies of...
In the second round of presidential elections on May 6,
2007, Nicolas Sarkozy defeated socialist candidate
Ségolène Royal and ten days later he replaced Jacques
Chirac. Starting in 2003, the film sums up the memorable
moments that lined Sarkozy’s path to the post of...
Mark is an actor who moves to Chicago where he finds work
acting in The Dream Play by August Strindberg at a local
theatre. During rehearsals he makes new friends and clashes
with the play’s eccentric and demanding director. Trying
to master the multiple...
Two ladies – mother and daughter – live on the sunny
Portuguese coast. Throughout their lives, they have had more
than enough money to live the good life – no work and lots
of pleasure. But now they have a problem: their wealth...
A 30 minute-long animated musical featuring Tom Waits and
Terry Gilliam tells the story of Willy, a young boy who
fights the destructive force of an all-devouring monster in
the village of Nix. This existentialist fairy tale is
rendered through compelling and visually overwhelming
animation...
Martin, the night watchman, arrives with the setting sun in
his rumbling blue Chevrolet. The cemetery mascots, EI Negro
and La Negra, chase his truck down the road and greet him
with wagging tails. The sound of construction fades away as
daytime workers leave...
A sleepwalker. A body. A family. A small community. Arlene
is like a ghost in her life. She lives in a small town in
the midlands – surrounded by field after field, woodlands
and laneways to disappear down and never come back… One
morning...
We have seen films about the middle-age crisis of men in
their 40s and then in their 50s. This film goes a step
further. Gianni is sixty, retired but not lazy yet. He is
Italian, has an unlikeable wife, an exalted daughter, a...
The film takes the viewer to Texas in the 1950s. Young Jack
O’Brien had a childhood full of games and beautiful
innocence. But adolescence brings disenchantment and the
relationship with his father, who could help him bear the
weight of the world, is rather...
A crazy situational grotesque with solid
performances (especially Michael Ostrowski and Andreas
Kiendl) and a great drive. A famous actress (played by the
actual Austrian star Elfriede Ott) has been kidnapped. But
why? Two friends, Horst (Kiendl) and Toni (Ostrowski),
needed an elderly woman to collect a...
Cheyenne is a former rock star. At 50 he still dresses
‘Goth’ and lives in Dublin off his royalties. When he
learns that his father, with whom he wasn’t on speaking
terms, has only a short time left to live, he travels to...
A story of miscommunication, isolation and desperate
alienation told through a conflict between a father and his
son. Kenan is a toll booth attendant who works like a robot
and spends his nights alone with his sick and disturbed
father. Introvert, reticent and confined...
Trou de Fer stands for Iron Hole, which is a unique and
grandiose natural phenomenon located in the middle of the
Réunion National Park in the Indian Ocean. On account of
volcanic activity, the Earth’s surface collapsed into
immense depths and allowed incessant rainfall...
The fresh fruit market in Hong Kong serves a cocktail of
prostitution, gambling, drug addiction and gang violence.
Innocence is sold at $20. The film portrays a micro-cosmos
of society, blending dialogues, gestures, morals and camera
movements into a balanced mixture.
Presenting surveillance, patrolling and voyeurism as
phenomena of the modern world, the film asks urgent
questions: Where do the limits of privacy lay and how
fragile are they? Do we have right to enter into other
people’s lives? Is evil demonic and daunting or...
Upon Pope’s death, the conclave elects a new head of the
Catholic Church. But the newly elected Pope gets stage
fright right before his confirmation, sinking into anxiety
over the responsibility that has been put on his shoulders
and leaving millions stranded in a...
Soldier Sukhov of the Red Army has been fighting in the
Civil War in the Middle Asia for many years. Just as he is
about to return home to his wife, Sukhov is chosen to guard
and protect the harem of a guerrilla...
