1991-2000

Quote:
A New York girl sets her father up with a beautiful woman in a troubled marriage while her stepsister gets engaged.Read More »

People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths. (Summary from IMDB)Read More »

From the director of The White Rose and The Nasty Girl, comes this stunning adaptation of Hungarian author George Tabori’s autobiographical, somewhat surreal novel. Shifting between Nazi-occupied Budapest and present-day Berlin, the film artfully depicts the true story of how Tabori’s mother Elsa escaped deportation to Auschwitz.Read More »

Quote:
Elle is an alienating mixture of South American surrealism and the classic Hollywood melodrama of e.g. Douglas Sirk (of whom Sarmiento is a great fan). The husband is in love, the wife is not averse to being loved and yet they are not happy. At least, not in the usual sense of the word. The man is after all rather too much in love to be not a little paranoid and the wife, slightly Hitchcock and fairly nervous, is too carried away by his love to be not a little shocked. He regards her as a match for the Venus of Milo, cherishes her as a work of art and tries to perfect her, with all the obsessiveness that entails. Read More »

Mark Rappaport’s creative bio-pic about actress Jean Seberg is presented in a first-person, autobiographical format (with Seberg played by Mary Beth Hurt). He seamlessly interweaves cinema, politics, American society and culture, and film theory to inform, entertain, and move the viewer. Seberg’s many marriages, as well as her film roles, are discussed extensively. Her involvement with the Black Panther Movement and subsequent investigation by the FBI is covered. Notably, details of French New Wave cinema, Russian Expressionist (silent) films, and the careers of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Clint Eastwood are also intensively examined. Much of the film is based on conjecture, but Rappaport encourages viewers to re-examine their ideas about women in film with this thought-provoking picture.Read More »

It is July 1st of 1997, and Hong Kong is bright in celebration. The United Kingdom handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China leaves Ga Yin, and his fellow soldiers without work. Which leads them to find employment and money any way they can get it. Without much success, Ga Yin decides to join his brother Ga Suen in the triad gang world.Read More »

Quote:
Mr. Laffler (Jiří Lábus) is strange. Everyone in the office he runs knows that. The clerk, Costain, (Lukáš Hlavica) also knows this, so he is very surprised when his otherwise impersonal boss does something as human as inviting Costain to dinner. But not at home. At home, he says, he does not accept guests. He leads him to an inconspicuous, secluded restaurant U Sbirra, where a very closed company of strange people meet.Read More »

Synopsis:
Andreas is a car thief. The cars he steals he turns over to people with whom he has minimal relations. His only friends are a prostitute who helps him in his jobs and a fisherman with whom he once did time in jail. One day he has a chance encounter with Ismini who lures him into a dangerous game.

U-turn was screened in the “Greek Film Noir” section of the 48th Thessaloniki International Festival.Read More »

Review by James Berardinelli:
“If you turn on the evening news these days, one of the first images you’re likely to see will originate from the devastated former Yugoslavia, where centuries-old hatreds have boiled over to ignite a scenario of unspeakable horror. Yet the sights of Bosnia, presented by TV as gruesomely tantalizing tidbits of violence and death, rarely provoke a reaction from the casual viewer. That’s how it has always been with television news programs, however — their coverage of any event, designed for those with limited attention spans, is superficial in the extreme. It’s nearly impossible to generate any strong feeling for a situation, no matter how cruel or inhumane it is, when all you get is a quick series of MTV-like clips.Read More »