2001-2010

Plot:Yu is a high school boy who lives with his father who became a priest after Yu’s mother died. But one day, a woman, Kaori, falls for Yu’s father although she knows that he is a priest. Yu is completely against this because he does not like Kaori’s eccentric presence intruding into the father and son’s peaceful life, and even more because she brings with her Yoko, the girl he fell in love with at first sight. He does not want the girl of his dreams to become a step-sister! One day, religious cult member Koike finds this so-called family an interesting group and kidnaps three of its members, leaving Yu behind on purpose hoping he will join the cult soon. He will not fall for Koike’s tricks, but instead will do anything to save the love of his life, Yoko, from this cult.Read More »

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When twelve-year-old Léo arrives at the naturist camp that his mother’s dragged him to, he thinks he’s going to pass out. Until he meets Antoinette and her magic mushrooms…Read More »

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The politics of the past and present begin to merge during the making of a motion picture in this drama from director Icíar Bollaín. Spanish movie director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) and his producer Costa (Luis Tosar) have arrived in Bolivia to shoot a picture about Columbus’ exploration and exploitation of the New World. While Sebastián has come to Bolivia for realistic scenery, Costa has chosen the location for the cheap and abundant supply of labor. An open casting call for extras attracts far more people than the picture needs, but when Costa tries to send them away, one would-be actor, Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri), makes a strong and eloquent case for fair treatment of the locals, and Sebastián casts him as Hatuey, the chief of a native tribe who fought the invading Spaniards. As Sebastián stages scenes of revolt against would-be colonists, a real battle is brewing in Colombia — the government has privatized the national water works, and the price of water has jumped by 300 percent, leading to protests and riots in the streets of Cochabamba. Daniel is one of the activists protesting price gouging for something as essential as water — will Sebastián and his colleagues join him in speaking out against this injustice? También la Iluvia (aka Even the Rain) was an official selection at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.Read More »

Synopsis from Offical Site
A musical voyage among exotic places and people of Anatolia, unique host of ancient civilizations, empires as well as mythologies and glory of 10 millennia.

The fruit of 350 hours of footage, more than 40,000 km traveled and 133 recorded live performances, Lost Songs of Anatolia may be the first example of its kind as a documentary-musical film. The cultural riches of Anatolia are sung in authentic performances recorded live on location spontaneously. With the modern arrangements made, an incomparable musical is formed.

While this journey is showing how music and culture is derived from life, geography and work, an exploration of Anatolia’s versatile cultures takes place on a basis of music, dance and rituals. The staggering environment surrounding these people and influencing their lifestyles contribute the lyric flow of the film.
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The movie takes place in a time when dreams are reduced to almost nothing and when it’s difficult to remain sane. Ordinary life becomes a one greater expectation.

Salih and Hakan who spend their entire days in front of the grocery shop thinking we were given the chance. Salih is like a older brother to Hakan. Hakan has just came back from the mandatory military service. His football career ended before even it had started because of an injury. He is without a job or a vocation He hopes to be to be a taxi driver. Salih is the psycopath of the neigborhood. He’s the only person who listens to Hakan and gives him advices. Although Salih has grown up in a well meaning educated family he’s involved in every kind of illegal business in the neighborhood. Everbody is scared of him. High school girl Özlem included. Hakan is crazy about her but he never had the the courage to talk to her.
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Basically a good murder mystery, ‘The Right Distance’ brings in contemporary issues like anti-foreign prejudices, marriages arranged with Eastern European women online, kids with computer smarts adults lack, and how these changes disrupt life in a little town. A beautiful young woman named Mara (Valentina Lodovini) comes to replace a schoolteacher in the Po Valley. Trouble ensues. One person in town doesn’t miss a trick: 18-year-old Giovanni (Giovanni Capovilla). He is highly motivated to become a journalist and has persuaded Bengivenga (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), an editor at a big city paper, to allow him to work as a low-profile stringer in the town. His job is to keep his eyes and ears peeled without anybody finding out that he’s a reporter. Naturally, he’s good with the Internet. He helps Mara set up her connection and in the course of dong so finds out her email password. Giovanni checks in on it from home and starts reading the accounts of day to day experiences she emails to her best girlfriend back home. Thus over time he finds out that she’s attracted to the local bus driver, Guido (Stefano Scandaletti), and that Hassan (Ahmed Hefiane), who runs the garage he himself works in, is attracted to her–and is stalking her outside her house in the dark. He also knows that Amos (Giuseppe Battiston), the tobacconist who’s making a fortune taking people fishing, went out in his boat with Mara and made some moves on her. It’s Amos who has the Romanian wife chosen from an online “catalog.” Hassan is an older (but handsome) Tunisian man. He has family members in the area but isn’t married. He has been in Italy a long time.Read More »

Loneliness and isolation are a part of life for two mine keepers in a remote mountain town. Their only light of hope comes in the form of a small dog they find and an unknown woman they see walking in the distance. People enter and exit their lives, including a group of mine workers—but it is the very world they have created for themselves to deal with their loneliness that keeps others out. Nevertheless, they still ultimately find pleasure in the subtle and simple things of life.
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IMDB user Review:

Artifacts Don’t Move

The idea of this, and the ideas of how we might watch it, are more engaging than the thing itself.

Japan is a collection of notions about what it was, perhaps more-so than any other culture with visibility. Both Japanese and the west look on that collection of cultural relics, sometimes to mine for expressive power.

(Arabia and Persia have a similar dynamic which differs in being based on knowledge rather than refinements in society. It also differs in that it destroyed what they had themselves — and deliberately, so only the anger at loss remains and none of the reference to introspection.)Read More »

From DVD distributor trigon-film:

Wu Hongyan, woman executioner in her thirties, works at the court in the province of Shaanxi in China, where she executes women condemned to death only. In spite of her macabre job, Wu Hongyan travels every weekend to a town nearby to join parties organized by a marriage bureau. The result of her dating is mediocre, until she meets the mysterious Li Jun. But she is thousands of miles away of imagining that Li Jun’s wife is the last of the women she executed. Electrifying!Read More »