The epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Kuras has spent the last 23 years chronicling the family’s extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic, and emotional film.Read More »
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A teenage girl struggles to achieve perfection as a distance runner amidst the intense surroundings of a specialty academy for athletes. Not content to run with the female squad, she tries to prove that she can run as fast as any of the male athletes. As she works to build her body into a high performance machine, she discovers some unsuspected obstacles from puberty and an unfortunate genetic predisposition. A smart coming of age story, Urusla Meier’s directorial debut features a remarkable physical and emotional performance from Louise Szpindel.Read More »
In 21st century Bucharest, to go out in the city on Saturday evening at the arm of a beautiful woman is a risky financial investment. Ovidiu, an unassuming high school teacher, never could afford it. Looking for a source of income more substantial than a teacher’s salary, Ovidiu plunges into a fabulous world – the beggar mob.
Important context: In the early 2000s, 3 million Romanian Lei was around 100 USD–the average monthly salary in Romania. It was a considerable amount.Read More »
Press Release
August in Athens. A time to escape. The summer is coming to an end. In the city center, the residents of a threestorey apartment building are preparing to get away for a few days. Through the eyes of a 17-year-old burglar who breaks into empty apartments, we catch a glimpse of the “dark side”, people’s hidden desires; we violate the secrets of the main characters and wait to see whether dreams become reality. Three apartments, three parallel stories, three takes on the daily life of a handful of people and the miracles they pray for. – Thessaloniki International Film FestivalRead More »
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Stanley Kubrick envisioned Eyes Wide Shut as an Odyssean chronicle of marital drift. After a series of absurd encounters with the unseemly, naughty bourgeois and the diseased rejects that pander to their ludicrous peccadilloes, Tom Cruise’s wandering soul gets the hint: don’t stray! Jean-Claude Brisseau’s subversive Secret Things is nowhere near as structurally rigorous as Kubrick’s swan song, but it certainly feels more daring. First, think Celine and Julie Go Masturbating. On what appears to be a lonely stage, the sexy Nathalie (Coralie Revel) begins to pleasure herself. Then the delirious swell of an opera piece, perfectly timed to the movement of Brisseau’s camera, which pans to the right to reveal a roomful of bar patrons, including innocent barmaid Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou), ogling the spectacle of Nathalie’s uninhibited libido. Read More »
Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games – betrayals, recriminations, provocations – as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.Read More »
Philipp Gerber is a smart, but self-satisfied car salesman. In an inattentive moment at the wheel of his car, he runs over a young boy riding a bike and drives away. As he has feelings of guilt, he tries to find out more about the accident’s victim and learns that the boy lies seriously injured in a hospital. Philipp wants to tell his mother Laura Reiser the truth, but he doesn’t. After a carefree holiday with his girlfriend Katja, he learns that the boy is dead. Meanwhile, Laura staggers between grief and the desire for revenge. One evening, she can’t bear it any more and jumps off a bridge, but Philipp saves her life…Read More »
The small-screen penchant for overwrought breast cancer melodramas tends to drown out more psychologically acute portrayals, so it’s refreshing to find a film that addresses the issue in a restrained yet emotionally engaging way. Helmer Martin Koolhoven is known for eliciting topnotch performances from his actors, and “South” is no exception. A simply told story that mostly eschews fireworks in favor of character, pic’s exploration of a woman’s inability to reintegrate her life after a mastectomy could attract an arthouse crowd with its sympathetic handling.Read More »
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Twenty-four hours in the tentative relationship of two young San Franciscans also dealing with the conundrum of being a minority in a rapidly gentrifying city.Read More »