2011-2020

Suzanne Daveau sketches a portrait of an adventurous woman who traverses the 20th century right up to the modern day guided by her passion for geographical research.Read More »

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The incomparable Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern) gives a mesmerizing, take-no-prisoners performance in Saturday Fiction, a slow-burn spy thriller set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai on the cusp of World War II. She plays acclaimed actress Jean Yu, who has returned to Shanghai from China after a long absence. Jean Yu is in rehearsals for a play to be directed by a former lover (Mark Chao), but she seems to have ulterior motives, functioning as a double agent and gathering intelligence for the Allies, including the fateful realization of Japan’s imminent attack on Pearl Harbor. Shooting in evocative black-and-white, director Lou Ye (Spring Fever) has created here a gripping thriller that builds to a nerve-wracking climax, and which never loses sight of the human beings caught up in the gears of history.Read More »

Ebbo and Vera Velten have been living in Africa for a long time. Ebbo is managing a sleeping sickness program. His work is fulfilling. In contrast, Vera feels increasingly uncomfortable with her life in the expat community of Yaoundé and the separation from her daughter Helen, 14, who is attending boarding school in Germany.
Ebbo has to give up his life in Africa or he loses the women he loves. But he has become a stranger to Europe. His fear of returning increases from day to day.
Years later. Alex Nzila, a young French doctor of Congolese origin, travels to Cameroon to evaluate a development project. He hasn’t been to Africa for a long time. But instead of finding new prospects, he encounters a destructive, lost man: like a phantom, Ebbo slips away from his evaluator. (Synopsis courtesy of the Berlinale)Read More »

“I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” These words, spoken in the Council of Ministers of the summer of 1941, started the ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front. The film attempts to comment on this statement.Read More »

Filipino director Vincent Sandoval follows his transgender drama Senorita with a story about nuns living in a remote convent during the Marcos yearsRead More »

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Psychological thriller about a couple, an impostor and the revolution. People are revolting and Juan and Mercedes celebrate with a handful of friends ignoring the curfew. As the friends leave, Juan discovers an stranger prowling the house who is disturbing his wife. He decides to confront the Stranger, who claims to know both and to have come complete the Plan. As the night progresses certainties become uncertain and the revolution comes to their house.Read More »

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As the shadow of night falls across the American West a lone man begins his work. Far from the confines, calamity, and culture of society, multimedia artist and storyteller Jeff Frost sifts through the visual dregs of places and people who once were.

Combining still and time-lapse photography with motion, music, and art, Frost reveals a world rarely seen. Rooted in science and the exploration of space, Frost’s work explodes with light, fire, and sound, utilizing 2D and 3D perspective, leading the viewer on a unique visual journey through worlds both real and imagined.Read More »

Georgia’s Oscar submission tells a harrowing true story taken from the Russo-Georgian War of 2008.

Shindisi is the name of the sleepy village where director Dito Tsintsadze’s passionately told tale of soldiers and civilians is set, a story made all the more poignant because it is taken from a real-life incident from the brief Russo-Georgian War of August 2008. For those turned off by war films, this is not your typical macho fantasy, though there is a long and well-filmed sequence of shooting, shelling, torching and grenades. But the pic’s real focus is on the compassion and bravery of the villagers who risked their lives to rescue wounded Georgian troops.Read More »

An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s next film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing,” traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.Read More »