ForeignIn Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode – and murder – joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium’ and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production des
ForeignFrom director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes this thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno. Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all...is true love.
ForeignGraceful, enigmatic, and often frightening, DOGTOOTH is an ingenious dark comedy that won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, propelling Yorgos Lanthimos to the forefront of contemporary cinema's most ambitious young filmmakers. In an effort to protect their three children from the corrupting influence of the outside world, a Greek couple transforms their home into a gated compound of cultural deprivation and strict rules of behavior. But children cannot remain innocent forever. When the father brings home a young woman to satisfy his son's sexual urges, the family's engineered "reality" begins to crumble, with devastating consequences. Like the haunting, dystopic visions of Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé, DOGTOOTH punctuates its compelling drama with moments of shocking violence, creating a biting social satire that is as profound as it is provocative.
ForeignThis critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg's stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer's apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head."
ForeignAt 16, Justine is a brilliant, promising student and a strict vegetarian. But when she starts veterinary school, she quickly encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world. Desperate to fit in during the first week of hazing rituals, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time and faces the terrible and unexpected consequences of her actions as her true self emerges.
ForeignThe year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely "erase" their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent "retribution." Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (SAINT LAURENT, NOCTURAMA) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn- of-the-century novella, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, THE BEAST poignantly conv
ForeignIn 1975, Pierre Goldman, a fiery and controversial figure of revolutionary left-wing activism, was put on trial in France. Accused of multiple crimes including two murders, Goldman proclaims his innocence. The Goldman trial reflects the political, ideological and racial tensions that marked the 1970s in France and Europe. Considered to be the trial of the century, it divided an entire country and widened the gap between the conservative right and left-wing intellectuals.
ForeignIn the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, Takumi and his daughter, Hana, lead a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for the local udon restaurant. Increasingly, the townsfolk become aware of a talent agency’s plan to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to the snowy wilderness. When two company representatives arrive and ask for local guidance, Takumi becomes conflicted in his involvement, as it becomes clear that the project will have a pernicious impact on the community. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to his Academy Award®-winning DRIVE MY CAR is a foreboding fable on humanity's mysterious, mystical relationship with nature. As sinister gunshots echo from the forest, both the locals and representatives confront their life choices and the haunting consequences they have.
ForeignWith her first film in a decade, the fearless 75-year-old French auteur Catherine Breillat (FAT GIRL, THE LAST MISTRESS) proves she’s as provocative as ever with her Cannes-stirring film, which drives down the dark road of uncontrollable passion. A remarkably nuanced, radiant Léa Drucker plays Anne, an attorney who has plateaued in her marriage to Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), a distracted businessman. His son, troubled seventeen-year-old, Theo (Samuel Kircher), from a previous marriage, has recently returned to Pierre’s ineffectual and despondent care. When Pierre leaves town for a business trip, Anne and Théo—confined under the same roof for the first time—find themselves in the throes of an unexpected and dangerously lustful affair, threatening the stability of the household. Music by Kim Gordon heightens the erotic tension of LAST SUMMER, a film that boldly surveys power dynamics, female desire, and fulfillment.
ForeignFinal day of school in a small Polish town. It's the very last chance for 12-Year-Old Gabrysia to tell her classmate that she had fallen in love with him. She sets up a secret meeting and blackmails her love interest to show up. But what was supposed to be an intimate talk spins out of control and this seemingly normal day in the lives of three ordinary elementary school students culminates in shocking and terrifying events.
ForeignThis multiple award winner from Tom Tykwer (The Princess And The Warrior) stars Franka Potente as Lola, the orange-haired punk girlfriend of Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a small-time courier for a big-time gangster. Manni is working a standard pickup/drop-off, and everything is going fine until an unforeseen incident makes Lola late to pick him up. One stroke of bad luck leads to another, and by the time Manni calls Lola, he has a big problem: He is supposed to meet his unforgiving boss in 20 minutes with 100,000 marks that suddenly he does not have. Lola rushes out of her apartment, attempting to get to Manni and somehow pick up 100,000 marks along the way. As the seconds tick down, the tiniest choices become life-altering (or -ending) decisions, and the fine line between fate and fortune begins to blur.
ForeignThis is the story of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, who begins her life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey becomes the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style.
ForeignAydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities.
ForeignIn Portugal - one European country in crisis- a film director proposes to build fictional stories from the miserable reality he is immersed in. However, failing to find meaning in his work, he cowardly runs away and leaves the beautiful Scheherazade to stand in his shoes. She will require enthusiasm and courage so as not to bore the King with sad stories of this country. As nights go past, restlessness leads to desolation and in turn to enchantment. Therefore Scheherazade organizes the stories she tells the King in three volumes. She begins like this: "It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that in a sad country among all countries...".
ForeignIn which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tons.She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “O auspicious King,in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, with all dedication and passion, devoted themselves to teaching birds to sing...” And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.
ForeignIn which Scheherazade tells of how desolation invaded men: It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a distressed judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence on a night when all three moons are aligned. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will tele transport himself to escape the Police while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad! The residents of a tower block in the suburbs will save parrots and piss inside lifts while surrounded by dead people and ghosts; including in fact a dog that... And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent. Damned tales! If things continue this way my daughter will surely end up with her throat slit! the Grand-Vizier, Scheherazade's father, thinks in his palace in Baghdad.
ForeignEver since the National University strike broke out, Sombra and Santos have been living in angst-ridden limbo. Education-less, motionless, purposeless, and unsure of what the strike will bring, they begin to look for strange ways to kill time. But their idiosyncratic routine is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Tomas, Sombra's kid brother. Unable to fit in amongst these older slackers, Tomas discovers that unsung Mexican folk-rock hero Epigmenio Cruz has been hospitalized somewhere in the city. Tomas convinces Sombra and Santos they must track him down in order to pay their final respects on his deathbed. But what they thought would be a simple trip to find their childhood idol, soon becomes a voyage of self-discovery across Mexico City's invisible frontiers.
ForeignFrom Pedro Almodóvar, the director of the Academy-Award(r) winning All About My Mother (Best Foreign Language Film, 2000), comes his most acclaimed film yet. TALK TO HER is the surprising, altogether original and quietly moving story of the spoken and unspoken bonds that unite the lives and loves of two couples. Two men (Benigno and Marco) almost meet while watching a dance performance, but their lives are irrevocably entwined by fate. They meet later at a private clinic where Benigno is the caregiver for Alicia, a beautiful dance student who lies in a coma. Marco is there to visit his girlfriend, Lydia, a famous matador, also rendered motionless. As the men wage vigil over the women they love, the story unfolds in flashback and flashforward as the lives of the four are further entwined and their relationships move toward a surprising conclusion.
ForeignMainland master Jia Zhangke scales new heights with Mountains May Depart. At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic that leaps from the recent past to the present to the speculative near-future, Jia's new film is an intensely moving study of how China's economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.
ForeignSundance triple award winner 'Hive' is a searing drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands—but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility.
ForeignPedro Almodovar is at the top of his game with "All About My Mother," a poignant, at times comedic examination of women in intimate relationships. "All About My Mother" visits themes of female vulnerability and solidarity, but in a new and profoundly mature way. Cecilia Roth plays strong-willed hospital worker Manuela, whose 18-year-old son's accidental death transforms her life. Reading her son's journals, grief-stricken Manuela realizes that he longed to hear about the father he never knew. Forsaking Madrid for Barcelona, she embarks on a search for the man she left almost 20 years before.
ForeignSentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayakis - pastries filled with sweet red bean paste (“an”). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen he reluctantly accepts. But Tokue proves to have magic in her hands when it comes to making “an”. Thanks to her secret recipe, the little business soon flourishes…And with time, Sentaro and Tokue will open their hearts to reveal old wound
ForeignDeath metal band Impaled Rektum escapes prison to perform at Wacken, Germany’s iconic music festival. Their wild and perilous adventure into the metal music scene challenges the band’s integrity in the sequel to cult classic HEAVY TRIP.
ForeignThe ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious button that was discovered in its seabed. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline, the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian indigenous people, of the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
ForeignWith TEOREMA, a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.
ForeignThe coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution. We meet nine-year-old Marjane when the fundamentalists first take power, forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. The story then follows her as she cleverly outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden, while living with the terror of government persecution and the Iran/Iraq war. Then Marjane's journey moves on to Austria where, as a teenager, her parents send her to school in fear for her safety and she has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Marjane eventually gains acceptance in Europe, but finds herself alone and horribly homesick, and returns to Iran to be with her family, though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, continuing to speak out against the hypocri
ForeignThe Prince is an explosive homoerotic prison drama set in a repressive 1970s Chilean prison. During a night of heavy drinking, Jaime, a hot-tempered narcissist, suddenly stabs his best friend. He is sent to jail for murder and there, alone and afraid, he comes under the protection of a tough older inmate known as “The Stallion.” The unlikely pair begin a clandestine romance but violent power struggles inside the penitentiary threaten their bond. This searing story of survival at all costs, takes its inspiration from Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’amour and Fassbinder’s Querelle in its affecting exploration of masculine aggression, conflicting loyalties and pent-up sexual desires.
ForeignWinner of six prestigious European Film Awards, including Best Picture and 2004 Golden Globe® nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, this coming-of-age adventure blends the fall of Communism with the salient emotions of a family's love. "Destined to become one of Germany's biggest international hits," (BBC Films), Good Bye, Lenin! is a beautiful introduction to a whole new, free world. In 1989, Christiane Kerner has lost her husband and is completely devoted to the Socialist East German state. A heart attack leaves her in a coma, and when she awakens eight months later, the Berlin Wall has fallen and it's a whole new world. To protect her from the shock, her son Alex hatches a plan to keep her in the dark. It's easy... all he has to do is turn back the handle of time.
ForeignFrom critically acclaimed, erotically candid writer/director Pedro Almodóvar (Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) comes a raw, seductive tale based on a novel by British mystery writer Ruth Rendell. When naive, lovestruck Victor (Liberto Rabal) attempts to seduce beautiful and wealthy but strung-out junkie Elena (Francesca Neri), all he gets for his trouble is a one-way, six-year ticket to prison, where he concentrates on strengthening his mind, his body...and his desire for vengeance on the man who put him there. After his release, Victor crosses paths with Elena, who is as beautiful as ever since she cleaned up her act. Still madly in love with her, Victor will stop at nothing to win her over even if it means revenge for Elena has married David (Javier Bardem), the cop who sent him to prison!
ForeignBased on true events, the story revolves around a manuscript detailing a 1995 failed assassination plot by the Iranian regime against twenty-one writers and journalists. Almost twenty years later, the existence of this document remains a threat and the head of the censorship board has hired two killers, Morteza and Khosrow, to collect the remaining copies and silence the participants. A masterful storyteller, Rasoulof slowly reveals the relevant details, splitting the narrative between the henchmen and their isolated, state-oppressed victims. Shifting tone from suspense to art-house drama, and moving between past and present with seamless fluidity, we follow Morteza and Khosrow on their mission while silently observing the suffocating existence of three surviving writers. Rasoulof was arrested in 2010 alongside fellow filmmaker Jafar Panahi for "acting against national security." He was given a prison sentence and banned from making films for twenty years.
ForeignStepping from the pages of Fredrik Backman’s international best-selling novel, Ove is the quintessential grumpy old man next door, with strictly enforced principles and a short fuse. Still grieving his late wife, Ove has largely given up on life until a boisterous young family moves in next door and forces him out of his shell in this heartwarming tale that reminds us that life is sweeter when it's shared.
ForeignA giant talking frog and an elusive cat help a listless bank employee, his traumatized wife, and a lonely accountant seek meaning in their lives and possibly save Tokyo from catastrophe in the animated feature 'Blind Willow Sleeping Woman'. Based on stories by acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami ('Drive My Car'), this feature debut by composer Pierre Földes won the Jury Special Mention award at the renowned Annecy Animation Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the Anima Festival in Brussels.In Tokyo, not long after the 2011 earthquake, Kyoko suddenly leaves her husband Komura after spending five days glued to the news on TV. Komura takes a week’s leave from work and heads north to deliver a box and its unknown contents to two young women. His colleague Katagiri, a simple debt collector by profession and an awkward loner in life, returns home one evening to find a 7-foot-tall frog asking for his help to save Tokyo from a tsunami. Using an innovative live-action 3D motion captur
ForeignIn this gorgeously animated drama, the lives of several strong-willed women and a young musician intersect. Their stories reveal the hypocrisies of modern Iranian society, where sex, drugs, and corruption coexist with strict religious law. In the bustling metropolis of Tehran, avoiding prohibitions has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation. Nevertheless, women invariably end up on the bottom rung of the social order. A young woman needs an operation to “restore” her virginity. A judge in the Islamic Revolutionary Court exhorts favors from a prostitute in exchange for a favorable ruling. The wife of an imprisoned drug addict is denied the divorce she needs in order to live independently. Making use of rotoscope animation, expat Iranian filmmaker Ali Soozandeh creates a portrait of contemporary Tehran that would be impossible by any other means.
ForeignDissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, PIERROT LE FOU is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.
ForeignAfter being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents' actions and the reality of the new world in which they find themselves. When the group encounters the mysterious Thomas, a Jewish refugee, Lore finds herself torn by conflicting emotions - her innate contempt for his kind and her burgeoning sexual desire. Lyrical, haunting, and unforgettable, Lore is a strikingly unique coming-of-age tale and an unforgettable look at the human legacy of the holocaust.
ForeignWith this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in favor of a personal, poetic vision of life as a bittersweet carnival. The infinitely expressive Masina registers both childlike wonder and heartbreaking despair as Gelsomina, loyal companion to the traveling strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn, in a toweringly physical performance), whose callousness and brutality gradually wear down her gentle spirit. Winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, LA STRADA possesses the purity and timeless resonance of a fable and remains one of cinema’s most exquisitely moving visions of humanity struggling to survive in the face of life’s cruelties.
ForeignAnne is a lawyer with a beautiful home, family and life. When her troubled step-son comes to live with them, she forms an intimate bond with him. Initially a liberating move, soon turns into a disturbing story with devastating consequences.
ForeignFrom acclaimed Korean writer/director Kim Ki-Duk comes this exquisitely beautiful and award-winning human drama set on a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft. Under the vigilant eye of Old Monk (Yeong-su Oh), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel. In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man (Young-min Kim), experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him to dark deeds. With winter, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew. With an extraordinary attention to visual detail, Kim has crafted an original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from innocence, through love and evil, to enlightenment and finally rebirth.
ForeignFour friends, all teachers at various stages of middle age, are stuck in a rut. Unable to share their passions either at school or at home, they embark on an audacious experiment from an obscure philosopher: to see if a constant level of alcohol in their blood will help them find greater freedom and happiness. At first they each find a new- found zest, but as the gang pushes their experiment further, issues that have been simmering for years come to a head and the men are faced with a choice: reckon with their behavior or continue on the same course.
Underscored by delicate and affecting camerawork, director Thomas Vinterberg's spry script, co-written with regular collaborator Tobias Lindholm, uses this bold premise to explore the euphoria and pain of an unbridled life. Playing a once brilliant but now world-weary shell of a man, the ever surprising Mads Mikkelsen delivers a fierce and touching performance.
ForeignPanah Panahi, son and collaborator of embattled filmmaker Jafar Panahi and apprentice to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and deeply moving comic drama. 'Hit the Road' takes the tradition of the Iranian road-trip movie and adds unexpected twists and turns. It follows a family of four – two middle-aged parents and their sons, one a taciturn adult, the other an ebullient six-year-old – as they drive across the Iranian countryside. Over the course of the trip, they bond over memories of the past, grapple with fears of the unknown, and fuss over their sick dog. Unspoken tensions arise and the film builds emotional momentum as it slowly reveals the furtive purpose for their journey. The result is a humanist drama that offers an authentic, often comedic, and deeply sincere observation of an Iranian family preparing to part with one of their own.
ForeignRobert, a Polish immigrant working at a fish factory in Norway, has come to earn money to pay off his mother's debts. Robert realizes he has feelings for his colleague Ivar. For fear of losing his position within a group of Poles at the factory, he hides his feelings, especially when it turns out that Ivar is doing vogue and is an aspiring drag queen.
ForeignThe second installment in Claude Berri’s sprawling rural tragedy that began with JEAN DE FLORETTE, MANON OF THE SPRING follows a beautiful but shy shepherdess (Emmanuelle Béart) as she plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her father’s land caused his death years earlier. Taken together, these masterful adaptations of the novel by Marcel Pagnol stand as high-water marks of the French cinema, recapturing the rich humanist tradition of its classical era.
ForeignJacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
ForeignSmall-time swindler Marcos (Ricardo Darín) observes Juan (Gastón Pauls) pulling off a scam on a cashier, and then getting caught as he attempts the same trick again. Claiming to be a policeman, Marcos drags Juan out of the store, then reveals himself to be a fellow grifter with a higher stakes game in mind, and invites Juan to be his partner. When an old time con-man enlists them to sell a forged set of extremely valuable rare stamps,"The Nine Queens," the tricky negotiations that ensue introduce a cast of suspicious characters including Marcos' beautiful sister Valeria (Leticia Brédice) and their innocent younger brother Federico (Tomás Fonzi). As the deceptions and duplicity mount, a slew of thieves and con artists make it difficult to figure out who is conning whom.
ForeignTHE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Guy Maddin’s ultimate epic phantasmagoria.Honoring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within.Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells histale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers. From here, Maddin andco-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder,skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six year-old child, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Maddin's grand ode to lost cinema. Created with the help of master poet John Ashbery, the film features Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin,
ForeignOnce-great Spanish matador Nacho Martinez has been reduced to starring in gruesome "snuff" films. Martinez is idolized by Antonio Banderas, who has no notion of his idol's current illegal profession. Terrified at the thought of drawing blood in the bullring, Banderas nevertheless seeks out Martinez' assistance in preparing for a bullfighting career. To prove his "machismo", Banderas rapes Martinez' lady-friend Eva Cobo. No one will believe Banderas' confession of the rape, so he decides to attach more importance to his crime by confessing to a recent rash of serial killings (actually perpetrated by Martinez and his cohorts). Bandera's case is taken by feminist attorney Assumpta Serna, who unwittingly--but not unwillingly--sets herself up as Martinez' next "conquest."
ForeignVersailles, August 1715. Back from hunting, Louis XIV–masterfully portrayed by French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Leaud (The 400 Blows) - feels a pain in his leg. A serious fever erupts, which marks the beginning of agony for the greatest King of France. Surrounded by a horde of doctors and his closest counselors, who sense an impending power vacuum, the Sun King struggles to run the country from his bed.
Based on extensive medical records and the memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon and other courtiers, The Death of Louis XIV is a wry neoclassical chamber drama, a work of pure magic by Albert Serra, one of today’s most singular directors.
ForeignThe most personal film by the underworld poet Jean-Pierre Melville, who had participated in the French Resistance himself, this tragic masterpiece, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, recounts the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought in the Resistance. Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret star as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime. Long underappreciated in France and unseen in the United States, the atmospheric and gripping thriller ARMY OF SHADOWS is now widely recognized as the summit of Melville’s career, channeling the exquisite minimalism of his gangster films to create an unsparing tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
ForeignA Louis Vuitton bag stuffed full of cash sends a group of hard-luck lowlifes on a desperate chase for the fortune in this pitch-black neo-noir crime thriller. Fish-mongering gangsters, a greasy cop, an “innocent” gym cleaner, a young prostitute, her wife beater of a husband, her ruthless boss and her clueless boyfriend all violently scheme to get their hands on the elusive bag. First time director Kim Yong-hoon’s witty thriller is a beautifully constructed puzzle that with each double-cross, the pieces fall into place. Starring Jung Woo-sung from Asura: City of Madness and Jeon Do-yeon, award winner in Cannes for her lead role in Secret Sunshine.
ForeignACADEMY AWARD® WINNER FOR BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Poland, 1962. On the eve of her vows, 18-year-old novice Anna meets her estranged aunt Wanda, a cynical Communist judge who shocks the naïve Anna with a stunning revelation: Anna is Jewish and her real name is Ida. Tasked with this new identity, Ida and Wanda embark on a revelatory journey to their old family home to discover the fate of Ida’s birth parents and unearth dark secrets dating back to the Nazi occupation. Masterfully directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love) and photographed in stunning black and white (in the classic 1.37:1 Academy ratio), IDA is a vital and cinematic evocation of postwar Poland and an intensely personal tale of moral and spiritual awakening.
ForeignBased on a true story, this story chronicles the life of Andres Lopez aka "Florecita" who after the killing of Pablo Escobar finds himself in the impossible position of having to go undercover for the DEA or go to the very prison where his mortal enemies wait to kill him. Turning states evidence, Florecita, quickly rising through the ranks of the Colombian Cartel finds himself working both sides of the most dangerous battle known to man.
ForeignAfter the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache. In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.
Foreign“Visionary” barely begins to describe this masterpiece of Chinese cinema and martial arts moviemaking. A Touch of Zen by King Hu depicts the journey of Yang (Hsu Feng), a fugitive noblewoman who seeks refuge in a remote, and allegedly haunted, village. The sanctuary she finds with a shy scholar and two aides in disguise is shattered when a nefarious swordsman uncovers her identity, pitting the four against legions of blade-wielding opponents. At once a wuxia film, the tale of a spiritual quest, and a study in human nature, A Touch of Zen is an unparalleled work in Hu’s formidable career and an epic of the highest order, characterized by breathtaking action choreography, stunning widescreen landscapes, and innovative editing.
ForeignFifty years ago, the Japanese Defense Forces killed Godzilla or so they thought. When a series of terrifying natural disasters begin to plague Japan, including the inexplicable offshore sinking of a U.S. submarine, a mystic old man warns his nation that Godzilla has come back to destroy Japan as revenge for all the souls lost in the Pacific War. When mere military might can not squash the monster, the mystic man awakens the Holy Beasts of Yamato - King Ghidorah, Mothra and Baragon, sleeping giants that protected Japan in ancient times. These untamed mammoth beasts take on Godzilla with frightening supernatural brute power that has been 2,000 years in the making. Tradition and technology collide in this chilling high-tech, cutting-edge fable.
ForeignThis prismatic portrait of the days and nights of a party girl in sixties Rome is a revelation. On the surface, I Knew Her Well, directed by Antonio Pietrangeli, plays like an inversion of La dolce vita with a woman at its center, following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (Divorce Italian Style’s Stefania Sandrelli) as she dallies with a wide variety of men, attends parties, goes to modeling gigs, and circulates among the rich and famous. Despite its often light tone, though, the film is a stealth portrait of a suffocating culture that regularly dehumanizes people, especially women. A seriocomic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure while keeping us at an emotional remove, I Knew Her Well is one of the most overlooked films of the sixties, by turns hilarious, tragic, and altogether jaw-dropping.
ForeignBased on the classic novel, UNKOWN SOLDIER follows the story of Rokka, Kariluoto, Koskela, Hietanen, and their brothers-in-arms. It shows how friendship, humour, and the will to live unite these men on their way there and back. The war changes the lives of each of the soldiers as well as the lives of those on the home front, and also leaves its mark on the entire nation.
ForeignOne of the sixties' great international art-house sensations, Woman in the Dunes was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal, idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara. Eija Okada plays an amateur entomologist who has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert; when he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kiyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema’s most bristling, unnerving, and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.
ForeignFrance, 1789. The prestige of a noble house depends above all on the quality of its table. At the dawn of the French Revolution, gastronomy still is a prerogative of the aristocrats. When talented cooker Pierre Manceron is dismissed by the Duke of Chamfort, he loses the taste for cooking. Back in his country house, his meeting with the mysterious Louise gets him back on his feet. While they both feed a desire of revenge against the Duke, they decide to create the very first restaurant in France.
ForeignWinner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is the new film from the celebrated director of Distant and Climates. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them, a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body. As night wears on, details about the murder emerge and the investigators’ own hidden secrets come to light. In the Anatolian steppes, nothing is what it seems; and when the body is found, the real questions begin.
Foreign15-year-old Mia and her parents move to the suburbs of Zürich. While Mia plunges into a wild teenager existence, her body begins to change oddly. First hardly noticeably, but then with a force that threatens to drive her out of her mind. Mia’s transformation progresses inexorably, and she turns into the being which has slumbered within her for years... and is now gaining the upper hand.
ForeignNovember is set in a pagan Estonian village where werewolves, the plague, and spirits roam. Rainer Sarnet’s third feature film is a bold, twisted fairy tale about unrequited love. In November, the villagers’ main problem is how to survive the cold, dark winter. And, to that aim, nothing is taboo. People steal from each other, from their German manor lords, from spirits, the devil, and from Christ. They are willing to give away their souls to thieving creatures made of wood and metal called kratts, who help their masters, whose soul they purchased, steal even more. A young farmgirl Liina (Rea Lest) is hopelessly in love with Hans (Jörgen Liik), a nearby farmhand, whose heart she loses to the daughter of the German manor lord. In order to regain his love, Liina turns to any means necessary, even if that means tapping into the black magic that is circling around the village. Estonian pagan legends and Christian mythologies come to a spell-binding intersection in November.
ForeignThe highly anticipated sequel to one of the scariest films of all time, [REC] 2 picks up 15 minutes from where we left off, taking us back into the quarantined apartment building where a terrifying virus has run rampant, turning the occupants into mindlessly violent, raging beasts. A heavily armed SWAT team and a mysterious government official are sent in to assess and attempt to neutralize the situation. What they find inside lies beyond the scope of medical science—a demonic nightmare of biblical proportions more terrifying than they could have possibly imagined. Above all it must be contained, before it escapes to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting world outside.
ForeignIn the fifth of their immortal collaborations, Federico Fellini and the exquisitely expressive Giulietta Masina completed the creation of one of the most indelible characters in all of cinema: Cabiria, an irrepressible, fiercely independent sex worker who, as she moves through the sea of Rome’s humanity, through adversity and heartbreak, must rely on herself—and her own indomitable spirit—to stay standing. Winner of the best actress prize at Cannes for Masina and the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA brought the early, neorealist-influenced phase of Fellini’s career to a transcendent close with its sublimely heartbreaking yet hopeful final image, which embodies, perhaps more than any other in the director’s body of work, the blend of the bitter and the sweet that define his vision of the world.
ForeignAs a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film's masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime collaborator).
ForeignGérard Depardieu delivers a towering performance as the immortal hero of hopeless romantics everywhere—he of the legendary long schnoz who selflessly uses his verse to help a friend woo the woman he himself secretly loves. Exquisite Academy Award–winning costumes, elegant cinematography, and a superlative screenplay adaptation by Jean-Claude Carrière and director Jean-Paul Rappeneau come together in a period piece par excellence that captures the wit, heart, and, yes, panache of Edmond Rostand’s beloved play.
ForeignViolette Leduc, born out of wedlock at the beginning of the 20th century, encountered Simone de Beauvoir in the post-WWII years in St-Germain-des-Prés. An intense relationship began between the two women, which would last their whole lives, a relationship based on the quest for freedom through writing, for Violette, and, for Simone, on the conviction that she held the fate of an extraordinary writer in her hands.
ForeignSure to be remembered as a landmark in Chinese cinema, this intensely felt epic marks a career cut tragically short: its debut director Hu Bo took his own life last October, at the age of 29. The protagonist of this modern reworking of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts is teenage Wei Bu, who critically injures a school bully by accident. Over a single, eventful day, he crosses paths with a classmate, an elderly neighbor, and the bully’s older brother, all of them bearing their own individual burdens, and all drawn as if by gravity to the city of Manzhouli, where a mythical elephant is said to sit, indifferent to a cruel world. Full of moody close-ups and virtuosic tracking shots, An Elephant Sitting Still is nothing short of a masterpiece.
ForeignBoth a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually ravishing films ever made, this legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream of rebellion. The result of an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration between the Soviet and Cuban film industries, director Mikhail Kalatozov’s I AM CUBA unfolds in four explosive vignettes that capture Cuban life on the brink of transformation, as crushing economic exploitation and inequality give way to a working-class uprising. Backed by Carlos Fariñas’s stirring score, the dazzling camera work by Sergei Urusevsky—an inspiration for generations of filmmakers to follow—gives flight to the movie’s message of liberation.
ForeignSophie Marceau's first screen performance as the fourteen year old school girl Vic won her international acclaim. Vic lives with her parents but she gets along much better with Poupette, her great-grandmother. Vic confides in the energetic old lady and shares all her joys and feelings with the very open-minded dowager while her parents muddle through the cross-purposes of their love life.
ForeignIn this beautiful and uplifting gay romance, two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives. Dutch phenom Gijs Blom stars as Sieger, a thoughtful 15-year-old who grapples mightily with his emerging sexuality. Ko Zandvliet co-stars as his love interest, the spirited, outgoing, and popular Marc.In their boyish summer courtship the pair swim, bike, and run — they also share ice creams and kisses as they gradually find the courage to be vulnerable with one another. The romance between them unfolds with a palpable sense of longing, and an aching sequence of heartache as Sieger tries to fight the inevitable outcome. With its authentic and perfectly poignant tone, plus an irresistible pop soundtrack, Mischa Kamp’s Boys ranks as one of the most wholesomely romantic gay teen films ever.
ForeignWhen Alexis (Félix Lefebvre) capsizes off the coast of Normandy, David (Benjamin Voisin) comes to the rescue and soon opens the younger boy’s eyes to a new horizon of friendship, art, and sexual bliss. David’s worldly demeanor and Jewish heritage deliver an ardent jolt to Alexis’s traditional, working-class upbringing. After Alexis begins working at the seaside shop owned by David’s mother (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), the two lovers steal every possible moment for a fugitive kiss, a motorcycle ride, or a trip to the cinema. Their relationship is soon rocked by a host of challenges, including an unexpected sexual rival (Philippine Velge) and a romantic oath that transcends life itself. Adapted by François Ozon from Aidan Chambers’s groundbreaking LGBT young adult novel Dance on My Grave, SUMMER OF 85 is a sexy, nostalgic reverie of first love and its consequences from one of France’s most versatile filmmakers. Their summer fling lasts just six weeks, but casts a shadow over a
ForeignOn January 3, 1889 in Turin, Italy, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, a cab driver is having trouble with a stubborn horse. The horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. After this, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan, until he loses consciousness and his mind. Somewhere in the countryside, the driver of the cab lives with his daughter and the horse. Outside, a windstorm rages. Immaculately photographed in Tarr’s renowned long takes, The Turin Horse is the final statement from a master filmmaker.
ForeignDetective Ma Seok-do investigates a murder case uncovering a Yakuza drug operation in South Korea. Conflict arises with the DEA Captain Joo when Ma's squad clashes with his jurisdiction, hindering their investigation. When Yakuza boss Ichizo senses his business is in danger, he sends hitman Ricky and his gang to South Korea to bring about order...
ForeignFour stories about love and self-acceptance: An eleven year-old boy struggles to keep secret the attraction he feels towards his male cousin. Two former childhood friends reunite and start a relationship that gets complicated due to one of them's fear of getting caught. A gay long lasting relationship is in jeopardy when a third man comes along. An old family man is obsessed with a young male prostitute and tries to raise the money to afford the experience.
ForeignIn this bold, genre-defying horror-musical mashup — the playful and confident debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska — a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters are drawn ashore in an alternate '80s Poland to explore the wonders and temptations of life on land. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly aura make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers in the half-glam, half-decrepit fantasy world of Smoczynska's imagining. In a visceral twist on Hans Christian Andersen's original Little Mermaid tale, one sister falls for a human, and as the bonds of sisterhood are tested, the lines between love and survival get blurred. A savage coming-of-age fairytale with a catchy new-wave soundtrack, lavishly grimy sets, and outrageous musical numbers, The Lure explores its themes of sexuality, exploitation, and the compromises of adulthood with energy and originality.
ForeignSensual and elegant, Catherine Corsini’s SUMMERTIME follows Carole and Delphine as they fall in love against the backdrop of early feminist activism in 1971 France. After living in the city, Delphine is called home to help with her family farm in the countryside and is forced to choose between her responsibility to them and the life of love she had in Paris with Carole. An enlightening tale about the infatuation of first love and its universal themes.
ForeignFleeing political turmoil in Barcelona, the culinary duo of brothers Fernando and Alberto seek refuge in the enchanting seaside town of Cadaqués. Here, they land jobs at El Surreal, a whimsical restaurant run by Jules, a man with a consuming obsession for local resident Salvador Dalí. Jules crafts quirky and extravagant gastronomic experiences, each a theatrical spectacle, hoping to lure the renowned artist to dine there. Fernando's unparalleled culinary flair soon sees him rise to the helm of El Surreal's kitchen, when he begins to fall for Lola, Jules' fiercely independent daughter. Despite El Surreal’s burgeoning fame and Cadaqués' alluring facade, shadows of political discontent loom large and tensions escalate between the tyrannical Lieutenant Garrido and the town's free-spirited hippies, joined by Alberto. Will these mounting pressures result in Dalí's eagerly awaited arrival at El Surreal? WAITING FOR DALÍ is a fanciful tale of love, art, and revolution — all set agains
Foreign"A Mao e a Luva" is the book that inspired our protagonist, Ricardo Gomez Ferraz, to start a silent revolution in one of the most dangerous Brazilian shantytowns. He collected books over a period of 15 years and encouraged dozens of children and adults to read them. In so doing he helped to keep them away from selling drugs, prostitution and crime. In 2008 he was given an esteemed award by Teleglobo for his services to society. Thanks to the work of Ricardo, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture has, to date, funded 514 small libraries throughout the favelas of Brazil.
ForeignWar rages throughout Europe, and soon Denmark is occupied by Nazi Germany. The occupation drives a wedge between Karl, the successful owner of a vast electronics factory, and his son Aksel. The younger man reacts to the increasing oppression and persecution of Jews and communists by joining the rising resistance movement.
ForeignThe third film from the Yugoslavian director of the acclaimed When Father Was Away On Business was inspired by a newspaper article on the inter-European trade in young Gypsy children. The result is an extraordinary epic that employs an elliptical, fantastic style influenced by Latin American magic realism.
ForeignSet in Zurich during the early seventies and boasting a killer soundtrack that includes the likes of punk legends The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, 'Fögi is a Bastard' is director Marcel Gisler’s honest depiction of teenage infatuation and obsession. Beni is a 15-year old sensitive romantic completely besotted by the super sexy Fögi, the front man to local punk outfit The Minks. The wide-eyed seemingly innocent Beni - who begins his courting of Fögi with lovingly penned letters - is welcomed into the out gay punk musician's world of partying and playing gigs. However, as Fögi slowly drifts from an ambitious music career to the addictive world of drugs, a wedge slowly forms in their relationship which leads to Beni becoming a submissive 'dog' in their relationship and also leads to Beni supporting his lover with sex work. With its raw depiction of urban life, ghettoized youth, working class angst, and gay male sex without any compromise, 'Fögi is a Bastard' is a must see fo
ForeignCamila (Agustina Muñoz, The Princess of France), a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York for an artist residency to work on a new Spanish translation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Upon her arrival, she quickly realizes that her work isn't compensating for the loss of her friends and the lover she left behind. When she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards from Danièle (Mati Diop, Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum), a former participant in the same residency, Camila second-guesses her artistic endeavors and begins to seek answers about her past. Hermia & Helena mingles actors from Matías Piñeiro’s Buenos Aires repertory with stalwarts of New York’s independent film scene (Keith Poulson, Dustin Guy Defa, Dan Sallitt). It is a film of dead ends and new beginnings, navigating amorous detours across hemispheres and languages, in which the words of Shakespeare clash with the entanglements of modern, digital life.
ForeignNicole (Julianne Cote) is adrift after college graduation, working a dead-end summer job in her small Quebec hometown and spending evenings with her best pal, Veronique. When her older brother Remi unexpectedly returns with his bandmates in tow, disrupting the girls' half-baked summer, it becomes clear to Nicole that something must and will change. Shot in luminous black and white and infused with a sultry melancholy, Tu dors Nicole brilliantly captures that liminal stage where the fading yet familiar attachments of childhood still seem far more appealing, precious, and real than the sterility of the grown-up world.
ForeignWinner of awards at Tribeca and Vancouver, 'My Wonderful Wanda' is a delightful satire of the haves and the have-nots set against the backdrop of a gorgeous lakeside villa in Switzerland. At the story’s center is Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska) a Polish caretaker who has left her own small children in Poland to look after Josef (André Jung) the stroke-ridden patriarch of the wealthy Wegmeister-Gloor dynasty. Wanda is adept in navigating the tricky family dynamics between the two grown (if still childish) offspring and the elegant if controlling matriarch Elsa (an amazing Marthe Keller), along with the sporadic intervention of animals stuffed or alive. But an unexpected turn of events turns everything upside down. While 'My Wonderful Wanda' exposes present-day realities of class injustice, thanks to writer-director Bettina Oberli’s empathetic lens, it is never less than a very human comedy.
ForeignIn the Yorkshire countryside, the life of three couples is upset for a few months, from spring to fall, by the enigmatic behavior of their friend George Riley.When general practitioner Dr. Colin inadvertently tells his wife Kathryn that the days of his patient George Riley should be numbered, he doesn’t know that George was Kathryn’s first love. Both spouses, who are rehearsing a play with their local amateur theatre company, convince George to join them. It allows George, among other things, to play strong love scenes with Tamara, who is married to Jack, his best friend, a rich businessman and unfaithful husband. A tearful Jack tries to persuade Monica, George’s wife who left him to be with Simeon the farmer, to go back to her husband in order to support him during his last months. George has a strange seductive power over Monica, Tamara and Kathryn, which highly upsets those men sharing their lives with the three women. Which one will George Riley take on holidays in Tenerife w
ForeignThe American-born expatriate filmmaker Eugène Green exists in his own special artistic orbit. His latest movie, The Son of Joseph, is perhaps his most buoyant. A nativity story reboot that gently skewers French cultural pretensions, it features newcomer Victor Ezenfis as a discontented Parisian teenager in search of a father with Mathieu Amalric and Fabrizio Rongione as his, respectively, callous and gentle alternative paternal options, and Natacha Régnier as his single mother.
ForeignGoran lives a simple life surrounded by his friends and family in the snow-covered Croatian highlands. But his carefree existence is put to test when his wife announces she is expecting a child. Instead of celebration, the good news unleashes the fiery personalities of the highlanders, leading to a darkly comic twist of events. The white winter will soon turn red.
Foreign1950s USA. Amongst stuffed poodles, sinful mambo lessons and threats of aliens, Mr(s). Fairytale spends her days locked in her dream home and without a moment of breath. A surreal world where anyone can finally be who they want to be.
ForeignFor journalist Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier) the assignment to interview renowned artist Salvador Dalí is a great career opportunity–if only he would agree to sit still and answer a single question. What begins as a 15-minute conversation blows up into a bonafide cinematographic documentary portrait, provided the world’s most enormous cameras are available to film it. As Judith’s interview is delayed, detoured, disrupted, and deranged by Dalí’s inexhaustible self-regard, the journalist finds herself becoming the subject. The legendary painter’s artistry and ego know no bounds, and Daaaaaalí! dutifully casts no less than five actors (Édouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand) as Salvador Dalí in this prismatic portrait. The prolific Quentin Dupieux’s latest comedy is an exercise in dream logic and surrealist homage, with the rug pulled out from under you again and again before you even manage to get up off the floor.
ForeignGodefroy de Montmirail is about to marry Frénégonde de Pouille when the Duke, her father, interrupts the wedding preparation. Someone has "stoleneth" the sacred relic of Sainte Rolande which assures the fecundity of the de Pouille women. It is now the property of Bernie 'the scallop" and Ginette, in the present. Calamity! The corridors of time are not shut and it can only spell the worst possible disasters. And to top it all off, Bernardin, the descendant of Bernie, came back with Godefroy and is stranded in the Middle Ages. Godefroy decides to return to the present for a harrowing second voyage in The Corridors of Time, the sequel to The Visitors.
ForeignClara (Penélope Cruz) and her emotionally distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) relocate to Rome to raise a family. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the crushing expectations around marriage, desire, and gender in the early 1970s remain as traditional as ever. Their children Andrew (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), Gino, and Diana are likewise poised at a precipice, on the verge of adolescence, with nothing but their imaginations to defuse family tensions. The eldest child, Andrew (nicknamed Adri by his parents), yearns for another life – an outsized, vibrantly-realized vision of a world where he gets to live as the boy he knows himself to be. Without an accepted vocabulary for talking about his transgender identity, Andrew tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy and makes a habit of running away to pursue a local Roma girl who accepts his boyhood at face value. As an outsider ostracized for her own eccentricities, Clara instinctively st
ForeignAn elderly man, Octav Petrescu (Marcel Iureș), returns to his childhood villa in Romania with the intention of selling of it. Arriving there after a decades-long absence, Octav wanders through the atmospheric house and undulating grounds that surround it and is confronted and transformed by the memories and spectres of his youth, eventually finding answers to questions that have cast a shadow over his adult life. Octav is a life-affirming story that celebrates the purity of childhood, friendship, love and the bittersweet nature of nostalgia.
ForeignAlong the banks of the Suzhou River, which winds precariously through Shanghai, Mardar (Jia Hongshen) falls in love with a dramatically beautiful young woman named Moudan (Zhou Xun). When he tries to kidnap her in order to demand ransom money from her rich father, she escapes him, jumping in to the river and disappearing forever. Mardar serves a three-year jail sentence for his attempted crime. Upon his release, he meets a woman that looks exactly like Moudan, named MeiMei (also played by Zhou Xun).An exciting, action-filled mystery suspense movie, director Lou Ye's Suzhou River shares many thematic and stylistic elements with Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
ForeignBased on a novel by the legendary Marcel Pagnol, JEAN DE FLORETTE is (alongside MANON OF THE SPRING) the first installment in a rich, engrossing epic of greed and deception set amid the bucolic splendor of the Provence countryside. Gerard Depardieu gives one of his great performances as the hunchbacked city slicker Jean, who is determined to make a success of the farm he has inherited—unaware that his new neighbor César (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) have launched a ruthless scheme to take control of the land for themselves.
ForeignEnzo, an ex-con from the poor outskirts of Rome, puts his newfound superpowers to use furthering his career as a delinquent, a fact which makes the local crime bosses far from happy. When he falls in love with Alessia, an unstable girl who brightens her dark world with elements from a Japanese anime, Jeeg, Enzo learns the value of helping others. But what price must he pay to become a hero?
ForeignLuchino Visconti's award-winning classic examines the solitary life of a retired American professor (Burt Lancaster) who lives alone in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. When he is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her companions - her lover, her daughter and the daugther's boyfriend - he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. Before long his quiet routine is turned upside down and the introverted professor becomes entangled in his tenants' machinations. In the midst of this chaos each of the new neighbors' lives - including that of the professor himself - takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.