ForeignAt the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan's obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History), Magellan presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.
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.
ForeignMars is under siege! Just before Halloween 2071, a terrorist bomb destroys a tanker truck on Highway One, close to a densely populated crater city. There are casualties up to half a mile from the blast. 500 killed or injured by what appears to be a biochemical weapon. The rewards for the bombers capture is massive and there are four humans and a dog who really need the money. Down on their luck as usual, the crew of the Bebop get on the case.
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 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 year is 1402. Margrete has achieved what no man has managed before. She has gathered Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a peace-oriented union, which she single-handedly rules through her young, adopted son, Erik. The union is beset by enemies, however, and Margrete is therefore planning a marriage between Erik and an English princess. An alliance with England should secure the union’s status as an emerging European power but a breathtaking conspiracy is under way that can tear Margrete and all she believes in apart.
ForeignWith a warm smile and positive attitude, Floria (Leonie Benesch, The Teachers’ Lounge) arrives at the surgical ward of the Swiss hospital where she works as a nurse on the overnight shift. With one colleague out sick and no replacement on deck, just two nurses and a nervous trainee will have to cover more than two dozen patients. The doctors to whom the nurses are supposed to defer are nowhere to be found. Floria juggles endless tasks: administering medication, updating charts, soothing patients, answering phones, and managing complaints. Surrounded by fluorescent lights, the steady beeping of monitors, and echoing footsteps, Floria struggles to fight off exhaustion and maintain her professional demeanor. Every second counts, and every interruption could mean the difference between life and death.Director Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) skillfully uses real-time tension to examine the emotional cost of frontline care work and the quiet, unglamorous triumph of keeping people alive in a
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
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.
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.
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.
ForeignAnna, an artist, and Magnús, a fisherman, live with their three children and charismatic sheepdog in the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside. As the fractures in their marriage come to the surface, the couple try to hold onto the afterimages of a life together and make sense of a deep and lingering devotion. Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Godland) brings surprising humor and emotional weight to this gorgeous, intimate, and brilliantly expansive scenes from a marriage, amidst the majestic backdrop of the changing seasons.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
ForeignWith MASCULIN FÉMININ, ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola," through a gang of restless youths engaged in hopeless love affairs with music, revolution, and one another. French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Paul, an idealistic would-be intellectual struggling to forge a relationship with the adorable pop star Madeleine (real-life yé-yé girl Chantal Goya). Through their tempestuous affair, Godard fashions a candid and wildly funny free-form examination of youth culture in pulsating 1960s Paris, mixing satire and tragedy as only Godard can.
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
ForeignOne of six sublime color masterworks that Yasujiro Ozu produced late in his career, the director’s second filming of his own 1934 silent triumph A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS represents the mature flowering of his style. Harnessing the full expressive potential of color, sound, music, and his exquisite compositional sense, he brings new depths of bittersweet feeling—tinged with an aging artist’s melancholic nostalgia—as well as a new air of expansiveness, to a story with enduring resonance.
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.
ForeignThe preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous CAUGHT BY THE TIDES. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—CAUGHT BY THE TIDES is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of chang
ForeignIn his ruthlessly clear-eyed final film, French master Robert Bresson pushed his unique blend of spiritual rumination and formal rigor to a new level of astringency. Transposing a Tolstoy novella to contemporary Paris, L’argent follows a counterfeit bill as it originates as a prop in a schoolboy prank, then circulates like a virus among the corrupt and the virtuous alike before landing with a young truck driver and leading him to incarceration and violence. With brutal economy, Bresson constructs his unforgiving vision of original sin out of starkly perceived details, rooting his characters in a dehumanizing material world that withholds any hope of transcendence.
ForeignA young teacher in modern Bhutan, Ugyen, shirks his duties while planning to go to Australia to become a singer. As a reprimand, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the world, in a village called Lunana, to complete his service. He finds himself exiled from his Westernized comforts after an arduous 8 day trek just to get there. There he finds no electricity, no textbooks, not even a blackboard. Though poor, the villagers extend a warm welcome to their new teacher, but he faces the daunting task of teaching the village children without any supplies. He wants to quit and go home, but he begins to learn of the hardship in the lives of the beautiful children he teaches, and begins to be transformed through the amazing spiritual strength of the villagers
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.
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.
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.
ForeignEric Rohmer captures the ache of summertime sadness with exquisite poignancy in this luminous tale of self-exploration. The Jules Verne novel of the same name provides the loose inspiration for the story of Delphine (Marie Rivière), a dreamy, introverted young secretary who, reeling from a breakup with her boyfriend, faces the anxiety-inducing prospect of spending her summer vacation alone. As she bounces from a getaway in Cherbourg to the tourist-choked Alps to the sunny beaches of Biarritz, Delphine passes through a whirl of social activity—but through it all remains profoundly alone, searching for the true human connection that seems to perpetually elude her. As honest a portrait of loneliness, depression, and the longing for understanding as has ever been committed to film, THE GREEN RAY stands as one of the most piercingly perceptive works by the French cinema’s keenest observer of human relationships.
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.
ForeignWhen Commissaire Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno, 'Léon: The Professional'), France’s leading serial killer investigator, is called to examine a grisly murder, he enters a world of secrets, lies and unthinkable horrors. The dead, whose hands and eyes have been removed, are clues to a terrible tradition the killer can no longer bear. Each murder means something more; each victim, a guilty conspirator in a grand immoral experiment. Filled with blood-chilling suspense, twisted turns and breathtaking locations in the French Alps, this tense thriller has the style, action and intelligence to keep you wondering what’s really happening right up until its shocking conclusion. Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz ('La haine') and featuring Vincent Cassel ('Eastern Promises'), Nadia Farès ('The Nest'), Dominique Sanda ('The Conformist'), Philippe Nahon ('I Stand Alone') and Jean-Pierre Cassel ('Army of Shadows').
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.
ForeignThe first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ForeignIn 15th century Austria, goatherd Albrun begins to gradually discover an ancient and malevolent presence deep within the remote Austrian Alps after the mysterious and horrifying demise of her mother. At a time when pagan beliefs about witchcraft and feminine wickedness spread fear into the minds of rural folk, the traumatized Albrun's reality evolves into a waking nightmare when she becomes a mother herself. Haunting and stylishly directed by debut filmmaker Lukas Feigelfeld, with an unsettling and immersive industrial score by MMMD, Hagazussa is a dark tale of a woman's struggle with evil and her own sanity that explores the thin line between ancient beliefs, black magic, and delusional psychosis.
ForeignIn the final film in the new 'Mothra' trilogy, King Ghidorah, the most destructive of all the monsters, returns to destroy the Earth. In the end, Mothra is indeed triumphant and takes her place among the greatest of all monsters.
ForeignThe year is 1912. A 136 million-year old pterodactyl egg, housed on a shelf in the Natural History Museum, has mysteriously hatched, unleashing a prehistoric monster onto the Parisian streets. But nothing fazes Adèle, when she finds a connection with the ancient bird and reveals many more extraordinary surprises. . .
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.
ForeignTwo rival marathon runners find their dreams of competing in the Tokyo Olympics fading after World War II breaks out and they are forced to serve their country. Jun-shik works on a farm owned by Tatsuo's grandfather. An aspiring Olympian, Jun-shik dreams of the day he will win the gold as a marathon runner. But Tatsuo also wants to be an Olympic runner, and he's determined to be the best. When the bombs start to fall and both men are drafted into service, Tatsuo becomes the leader of Jun-shik's unit and hatches an ambitious plan to get the upper hand over their enemies. Unfortunately his plot fails, and both men are taken prisoner by the Soviets. Subsequently escaping but torn apart by fate, Tatsuo and Jun-shik later cross paths on the beaches of Normandy, just as the Allies prepare to execute Operation Overlord. My Way was the “Audience Award Winner” and the 2012 Dallas International Film Festival and directed by Je-gyu Kang of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.
ForeignSpain, 1966: Antonio (Javier Cámara, from “I’m So Excited!”) is a teacher and a Beatles fan – facets he combines by getting his pupils to recite the lyrics from “Help” in English class. When he learns that his idol John Lennon is making a film in Almería (Richard Lester’s “How I Won the War”) he resolves to meet him. On the journey he picks up two young runaways: Bethlehem, a pregnant girl fleeing a convent, and Juanjo, a boy escaping a dictatorial father.
ForeignBalancing physical action with Buddhist musings on life and death, the most spiritual of the Lone Wolf and Cub films finds Ogami’s combat skills put to the test by five different warrior-messengers.
ForeignDeep in the Amazon jungle, a group of nubile naifs are trapped in a primitive prison by whip-cracking white slavers who aren't above sampling the merchandise themselves. But these hothouse flowers aren't about to be plucked, and the girls go native - only to fall into the hands of a perverted priest whose followers just love a woman in war paint! Caught between brutal bounty hunters and the holy man's horny henchmen, it's a battle of wits, weapons, and feminine wiles as the desperate damsels trade it all to escape this poison paradise alive!
Foreign(Subtitled) In a small desert town near Jiayu Pass in China (the first pass at the west end of the Great Wall), Wang owns a noodle shop where he, his wife and his employees also live. Not exactly a loving boss, he spends every penny to his own advantage, owing his workers their wages for months. Miserable from suffering with Wang’s dark temper and abuse, his wife has an affair with Li, who can spin round sheets of noodle dough nimbly but never shows the same confidence outside the kitchen. Every time Li drives her to buy rouge, the two have sex in the carriage. One day, to Li’s dismay, she purchases a gun from a Persian merchant, claiming that only Wang’s death can guarantee their happiness. Never a match for her biting wit and tongue, Li agrees to hide the weapon. Meanwhile, waiter Zhao and patrol officer Zhang – both bribed by the cunning Wang – inform him of the gun and the affair respectively. After catching her wife red-handed and grappling with her during one of her rou
ForeignDirected by Oscar®-winner Pierre Schoendoerffer, and based on his novel of the same name, THE 317th PLATOON captures the terror and chaos of the last days of the French war in Indochina. This is a classic war film that influenced later American cinema on Vietnam.
1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their base and evacuate. The French and Laotian soldiers must brave the Cambodian jungle on foot to reach the safety of French-held Tao Tsai, hoping to get there before the town falls.
The men are optimistic as they set out. But what should be a 48-hour trek goes wrong almost from the start. After running into a Viet Minh supply base, the 317th platoon take casualties. Their rookie leader, the idealistic sub-lieutenant Torrens (Jacques Perrin) has spent all of 18 days in Indochina and insists on carrying the wounded. He clashes with his adjutant
ForeignDiana Prieto is pregnant and taking care of her autistic son Martin has become overwhelming. She hires Luz, a gifted caregiver from the Philippines and Martin quickly begins improving under Luz's supervision, but Diana's worried that he's only being taught to speak Filipino. Diana begins to suspect that Luz is using the language barrier and voodoo to turn Martin against Diana and into something far more sinister.
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.
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.
ForeignNiko is having a tough morning. He’s broken up with his girlfriend, been cut off from his monthly allowance, and was just declared “emotionally unstable” by a court-appointed psychologist. If only he could find a decent cup of coffee. Painting an eventful day-in-the-life of a twenty-something law school dropout, A Coffee In Berlin follows Niko as he drifts through a series of absurd, funny and, ultimately, life-changing encounters with the people and city around him. Photographed in timeless black and white and enriched by a snappy jazz soundtrack, Jan Ole Gerster’s vibrant and charming debut, which swept the German Film Awards in 2013, is a slacker comedy with a poignant center, and a love-letter to the city of Berlin and Generation Y.
ForeignBursting with the colorful street style & music of Nairobi’s vibrant youth culture, RAFIKI is a tender love story between two young women in a country that still criminalizes homosexuality. Kena and Ziki have long been told that “good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives” - but they yearn for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls encourage each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, Kena and Ziki must choose between happiness and safety.
Initially banned in Kenya for its positive portrayal of queer romance, RAFIKI won a landmark supreme court case chipping away at Kenyan anti-LGBT legislation. Featuring remarkable performances by newcomers Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva, RAFIKI is a hip tale of first love “reminiscent of the early work of Spike Lee” (Screen Daily) that’s “impossible not to celebrate” (Variety)!
ForeignThree siblings reunite to save the family vineyard in picturesque Burgundy in this tender tale of a new generation finding its own unique vintage. When Jean (Pio Marmaï), the black sheep of the family, unexpectedly returns from abroad to visit his ailing father, he reconnects with his strong-willed sister, Juliette (Ana Girardot), now running the family wine business, and youngest brother Jeremie (Francois Civil), recently married into a prestigious local wine family. As four seasons and two harvests go by the siblings must navigate their inheritance and find their trust in one other as they work to preserve the land that ties them together in this finely-textured saga from acclaimed director Cédric Klapisch (L’Auberge Espagnole).
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
ForeignFrom the acclaimed director of Farewell, My Concubine comes The Emperor and the Assassin a visually stunning epic, exploring the devastating price one country pays for peace and one man pays for power. Ying Zheng, the King of Qin, has one driving ambition: to unify China's seven kingdoms into one magnificent empire. Impressed by her lover's convictions, Lady Zhao (Gong Li) helps Ying Zheng concoct an assassination plot that would justify the conquest of Qin's most powerful enemy. When Ying Zheng's peaceful mission explodes into a brutal holocaust, a disillusioned Lady Zhao is forced to question her loyalty and her lover's destiny.
ForeignThis invigorating film from Mike Leigh was his first international sensation. Melancholy and funny by turns, it is an intimate portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a troubled, ill-tempered layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extraordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams—such as the father’s desire to open a food truck—carry enormous weight.
ForeignThe fourth installment in François Truffaut’s chronicle of the ardent, anachronistic Antoine Doinel, BED AND BOARD plunges his hapless creation once again into crisis. Expecting his first child and still struggling to find steady employment, Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) involves himself in a relationship with a beautiful Japanese woman that threatens to destroy his marriage. Lightly comic, with a touch of the burlesque, BED AND BOARD is a bittersweet look at the travails of young married life and the fine line between adolescence and adulthood.
ForeignSet against the backdrop of the beautiful Mediterranean, Swept Away is Lina Wertmuller's most famous and controversial film about sex, love and politics. On an elegant yacht cruising off the coast of Sardinia, Raffaella (Mariangela Melato), a rich and stunning capitalist, enjoys tormenting Gennarino (Giancarlo Giannini), a Communist sailor. Fate weaves a different scenario and roles become reversed when the two find themselves stranded together on a deserted island. Raffaella must submit to Gennarino in order to survive, which culminates in a dramatic climax when they are rescued. They must determine if their love can survive the harsh realities of civilization.
Foreign"Why would I tie myself to one woman?" asks Jerôme in CLAIRE’S KNEE, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly incites a moral crisis for Jerôme while creating an image that is both the iconic emblem of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales and one of French cinema’s most enduring moments.
ForeignThe mysteries of everyday life come into astonishing focus in one of Abbas Kiarostami’s greatest cinematic achievements. A slyly self-reflexive commentary on the director’s own artistic practice, THE WIND WILL CARRY US unfolds with unhurried majesty as it follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) whose assignment to cover a small village’s funeral rites is continually frustrated by an elderly woman’s refusal to die. Along the way, though, he forges surprising, unsettling, and enlightening connections with those he meets. Suffused with Kiarostami’s love for people, poetry, and the arid beauty of rural Iran, this meditative masterpiece reflects upon the boundaries between intimacy and alienation, tradition and modernity, with the utmost grace.
Foreign"The Flower of My Secret" is the new film from Pedro Almodovar, Spanish director of such avant garde hits as "Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and High Heels. Leo (Marisa Paredes) is a bestselling author of romantic fiction, but has been writing under a pseudonym name for years. Now in the middle of her life, Leo has reached a creative and emotional crisis. Tired of producing popular fiction when her heart yearns to write truly great literature, her very success has become a burden to her; unable to accept that her marriage to Paco (Imanol Arias) is rapidly disintegrating, Leo finds herself at a crossroads in her life. Even Leo's mother and sister can offer no consolation as they constantly bicker with one another. The one ray of hope in Leo's life comes from Angel (Juan Echanove), the editor of the newspaper El Pais, who offers her a job as a critic for a national arts supplement. Leo's first assignment brings her face to face with her alter-ego causing an examination of her
ForeignJust when Frank Valken pulls off his last bank heist before settling down with his wife and daughter, a gang of killers steps in and assassinates every witness in the parking lot. Among the corpses there is the one of the magistrate who is investigating the Mad Snipers case. Thirty years later, they seem to be back. Arrested in the act and faced with media pressure, Frank has no choice but to escape to try to prove his innocence.
ForeignA film imbued with the ideas of Sufism, The Silence tells of Khorshid, a young blind boy from Tajikistan who earns rent money for his family by tuning rare instruments but becomes enraptured by the sonorous music he hears on his way to work each day.
ForeignOne of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette (La belle noiseuse) began shooting his debut feature in 1957, well before that cinema revolution officially kicked off with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Ultimately released in 1961, the rich and mysterious Paris Belongs to Us offers some of the radical flavor that would define the movement, with a particularly Rivettian twist. The film follows a young literature student (Betty Schneider) who befriends the members of a loose-knit group of twentysomethings in Paris, united by the apparent suicide of an acquaintance. Suffused with a lingering post–World War II disillusionment while evincing a playful temperament, Rivette’s film marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career.
ForeignTamer El Said’s debut tells the story of a filmmaker from downtown Cairo as he struggles to capture the soul of a city on edge. Shot in Cairo, Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin during the two years before the outbreak of revolution in Egypt, the film’s multi-layered stories are a visually rich exploration of friendship, loneliness, loss and life in cities shaped by the shadows of war and adversity.
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.
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).
ForeignWINNER OF THE GRAND JURY PRIZE AT THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL, the new film from master filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (Rebels of a Neon God, What Time Is It There) is a haunting vision of a father and his two young children struggling to survive on the streets of Taipei. When a mysterious woman shows up to care for the kids, the father starts to come apart. Exquisitely photographed in dark neon-lit tones, STRAY DOGS is a bold, nightmarish depiction of a society on the brink.
ForeignXavier Giannoli’s sumptuous adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s epic novel, Lost Illusions is a ravishing vision of the birth of modern media. Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin) is an ambitious and unknown aspiring poet in 19th century France. He leaves his provincial town, arriving in Paris on the arm of his admirer, Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France). Outmatched in elite circles, Lucien’s naive etiquette prompts Louise to retreat back to her husband, leaving the young poet to forge a new path. Lucien makes a new friend in another young writer, Etienne Lousteau (Vincent Lacoste), who introduces him to the business of journalism where a salon of wordsmiths and wunderkinds make or break the reputations of actors and artists with insouciant impunity. Lucien agrees to write rave reviews for bribes, achieving material success at the expense of his conscience and soon discovers that the written word can be an instrument of both beauty and deceit.
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.
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.
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.
ForeignA new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.
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.
ForeignA famous Paris auctioneer discovers that a valuable painting stolen by the Nazis during World War II is hanging in the home of a factory worker in a small town. As he tries to figure out what to do, he becomes caught between his dishonest intern, his smart ex-wife who is an art expert, and the unsuspecting worker who now faces a difficult moral choice.
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.
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.
ForeignOmar, a young baker turned freedom fighter, is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police. As suspicion and betrayal jeopardize his longtime trust with accomplices and childhood friends, Omar must face painful choices about life, manhood and love.
Foreign17-year old Andrej is admitted to a youth correctional facility where he meets Željko, another delinquent inmate who soon starts exploiting Andrej in return for keeping his homosexuality a secret. But when he's faced with a decision between joining Željko in his life of crime and staying true to himself, Andrej is finally put to a test of his personal responsibility and moral integrity.
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.
ForeignA young destitute woman lands a job as a cleaner at a rundown hospital in the heart of Johannesburg. When she discovers an abandoned young girl in the hospital, who believes she is tormented by a supernatural force, she must face her own demons from her past in order to save the child from the abusive monster that pursues them both relentlessly.
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.
ForeignA passionate tale of love and liberation set within the conservative modern society of the Republic of Georgia, AND THEN WE DANCED follows Merab, a devoted young dancer who, with his partner Mary, has been tirelessly training to land a spot in the National Georgian Ensemble. The arrival of Irakli—a confident and gifted male dancer with the perfect form and rebellious streak Merab lacks—at once sparks both an intense competitive rivalry and a burgeoning romantic desire that threatens Merab's security, family relationships and his future in dance.
ForeignParis in the 1930s — a playground for industrial heirs and debonair architects, but the City of Lights does not shine evenly for all. Struggling actress Madeleine (Nadia Terezkiewicz) and her best friend Pauline (Rebecca Marder), an unemployed lawyer, live in a cramped flat and owe five months’ rent. Opportunity knocks after a lascivious theatrical producer who made an inappropriate advance towards Madeleine turns up dead. Madeleine stands trial for murder and ascends to decadent stardom, with Pauline serving as defense counsel and media circus ringmaster. A new life of fame, wealth, and tabloid celebrity awaits — until the truth comes out. Adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil and featuring a murder’s row of a supporting cast including Isabelle Huppert, Dany Boon, and Fabrice Luchini, The Crime Is Mine is a rollicking farce and scabrous satire with a wily feminist edge from one of French cinema’s most chameleonic stylists, François Ozon.
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.
ForeignParis, 1967. Disillusioned by their suburban lifestyles, a group of middle-class students, led by Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), form a small Maoist cell and plan to change the world by any means necessary. After studying the growth of communism in China, the students decide they must use terrorism and violence to ignite their own revolution. Director Jean-Luc Godard, whose advocacy of Maoism bordered on intoxication, infuriated many traditionalist critics with this swiftly paced satire.
ForeignThrough the eyes of a doctor who worked in São Paulo's infamous House of Detention for 12 years, Carandiru tells stories of crime, revenge, love and friendship, culminating in the fateful 1992 massacre that left 111 people dead. Hector Babenco, whose direction won him a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, makes use of striking images to tell each story that makes up Carandiru Station, the book by Dr. Drauzio Varella that spent 168 weeks on the bestseller list in Brazil and is one of the most successful titles in Brazil's history. Gathering together the doctor's stories of Latin America's largest prison, Babenco composes a sweeping and varied tapestry, full of humor and pathos, but always driven by a humanistic sense and a belief in redemption.
