1991-2000

A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Gypsy girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef’s family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father’s in prison and his heavily-armed brother’s on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef’s schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he’s waited so long for.Read More »

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Bænken (The Bench), dir. by Per Fly. tells the tale of Kaj, a stubborn and proud alcoholic who has squandered away most of his life in devotion to the bottle. When his estranged daughter moves, by coincidence, into the same public housing project as him, he gets a second chance. A sympathetic, witty, and moving drama about responsibility and family ties, à la Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.Read More »

A mentally disturbed woman is further tormented after discovering a girl who closely resembles her recently deceased daughter.Read More »

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Using the backdrop of the banality and ordinariness of everyday life in a small provincial town, the film analyses the relationship between two women friends, who struggle to find their way in post-communist Poland. The small events of their lives represent universal feelings of being trapped and lost in a new world, in contrast to the successes of the dark side of democracy – drug dealing, crime and pornography. By its very nature, the film creates a picture of provincial Poland after democracy, but its charm is in the understated relationship between the two friends and the people around them and in the mosaic structure that builds up the film piece by piece.Read More »

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Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, and director André Téchiné collaborate for the second time (following their outstanding My Favorite Season) in a powerful story about a Paris cop (Auteuil) who comes from a criminal family. When his father and brother are murdered, suspicion shifts to his lover (actress Laurence Côté), who then disappears. Auteuil’s character reluctantly teams up with her lesbian girlfriend (Catherine Deneuve) both to find her and clear her name. The gripping story is told in a nonlinear series of overlapping chapters taking place before, during, and after the killing. Time bends and shifts, forcing the action to ripple through an ever-widening pool of neuroses and tragedy. The best part of the film, however, is the always- mesmerizing cold-fusion chemistry between Deneuve and Auteuil, two great actors who never wear their hearts on their sleeves.Read More »

Ballet is a 1995 American documentary film directed by Frederick Wiseman. It portrays rehearsals, choreography, performances, business transactions, and other day-to-day life of the American Ballet Theatre. Much of the footage dates from the 1992 season. It also includes scenes from the company’s European tour, namely in Greece and Copenhagen.Read More »

After second world war the people from Ruthenia’s Carpathian villages were promised a better life in Bohemia. Once settled down they felt like strangers at the new places, so memories and tales became very important reminding them of their old homes. One of these tales is about Jakub, a man who knew the bible by heart. This film follows his trace portraying the almost forgotten loss of those people who nowadays still feel without a home.Read More »

The lives of Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman are set against the golden era of Hollywood, HUAC and the issue of McCarthyism of the 1950s. This intimate look at the lives of two of this century’s literary titans follows their tumultuous affair, drinking bouts, career highs and lows, and activities in support of left-wing causes including Hammett’s public avowal of Communism and his membership in the Communist Party and Hellman’s sympathies for the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union before World War II. Bebe Neuwirth also appears as socialite-writer Dorothy Parker.Read More »

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The most daring and achieved of all the ‘illegal’ independent films made in China in the ’90s – and quite probably the last, since it prompted the Film Bureau to formally outlaw unauthorised production and confiscate the directors Zhang Yuan’s passport.Read More »