2001-2010

Actress Isild Le Besco (Girls Can’t Swim) makes her feature debut as a director with Demi-Tarif (Half-Price). The movie, shot on digital video on a miniscule budget, garnered attention in its native France after renowned filmmaker Chris Marker compared the experience of seeing it to the experience he and his friends had upon seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless for the first time. Demi-Tarif follows the low-key adventures of three young siblings, Romeo (Kolia Litscher), Launa (Lila Salet), and the youngest, Leo (Cindy David), left on their own in a rundown Paris apartment. One of them narrates, wistfully explaining how their mother abandoned them and calls them once in a while to see how they are doing or tell them she loves them. The three kids do as they please, roaming the streets, running out of restaurants without paying for food, and shoplifting from the local grocery store. They eat whatever and whenever they want, gorging themselves on sweets. They beg for change on the Metro and show up late for school in tattered, dirty clothes. All the while, they try to keep the fact that they are alone a secret from the world of adults. Demi-Tarif had its U.S. premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.Read More »

An artist spends his or her existence examining life through their art, so why is it often so hard to use art to examine the artist’s life in turn? We’ve all seen biopics that merely scratch the surface of a creative existence, either spending too much time focusing on the travails of the individual and leaving their creations by the wayside, or flat studies of the work alone that seemingly forget that there was a person behind the words or images.Read More »

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Aicha, Radia and their mother live removed from the world in the underground servant’s quarters of a deserted mansion. The precarious balance of their daily life is shaken by the arrival of a young couple who move into the main house. A bizarre cohabitation settles between the couple and the three women who decide not to make their presence known to these unexpected neighbors. They cannot leave their hiding place as it conceals secrets buried for years. But Aicha, the youngest sister, is attracted by the newcomers.Read More »

From the IMDB:
Set in ancient Tibet under the shadow of the Himalayas, the young prince Lhamoklodan learns of his father’s mysterious death and returns to the Kingdom Jiaobo. Troubled by his mother’s sudden remarriage to his uncle Kulo-ngam, he swears to find the truth of his father’s death. His obsession of revenge overwhelms his spirit and shadows his love to Odsaluyang. When he points his sword at the new king, Queen Nanm finally tells her beloved son, Lhamoklodan, the true identity of his uncle. In the struggle to face his destiny and fight his demons, a new king is born.Read More »

A middle-aged, unemployed heroin-addict, Checkie, loiters on the Tbilisi street outside his son’s school, where he himself was once a promising student. His wife, meanwhile, struggles to pay the tuition and understand her husband’s lack of interest in the family’s survival—even as the bank repossesses their furniture. But when a group of policemen blackmails Checkie into entrapping the son of his wealthy friend, husband and wife are unified by the uncertainty of their deepening moral dilemma, and a series of worsening foul-ups, in Levan Koguashvili’s lightly humorous yet realistic drama about the fate of a generation left behind in Georgia’s post-Soviet era.Read More »

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A Berlin-set drama centered on a 40-something couple who, separately, fall in love with the same man.Read More »

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Un jour, un homme, un cinéaste fait un rêve: il rêve qu’il fait un film qui contiendrait tous les films qu’il a rêvés de faire.Read More »

Save Shakespeare, Chekhov is the literary giant whose work is most frequently adapted for the screen. Based on his eponymous 1891 novella, THE DUEL gives life to a classic Chekhovian tale: the young ne’er-do-well aristocrat vs. the arrogant man of science; the attraction of a manipulative, narcissistic mistress vs. the life of the mind and of principled action. Gambling, alcohol and flirtations consummated in an impossibly beautiful countryside hold obvious attractions for Laevsky. But he’s brought up short when financial ruin and his mistress’s sexual dalliances lead to a violent denouement. Dover Kosashvili, director of LATE MARRIAGE, assembles a brilliant ensemble cast of British actors who strike just the right balance between intrigue and that particularly Russian brand of ennui we associate with Chekhov — but which today might elicit a prescription for Celexa.Read More »

Phillipe Scheffner’s film is about Indian soldiers detained in a German War Camp during World War I. Here is a synopsis from the official website:
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“There once was a man.
This man came into the European war.
Germany captured this man.
He wishes to return to India.
If God has mercy, he will make peace soon.
This man will go away from here.”Read More »