2011-2020

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As anyone who saw last year’s Being 17 knows, the great, undersung French filmmaker Andre Techine doesn’t direct like most 74-year-olds. It wasn’t just the racing camera and breathless pace that made that chronicle of the evolving bond between two rural high-school boys so vital; it was how alive Techine was to the possible twists and turns of male sexuality, as well as to the sometimes surprising leaps of the human heart. Though the movie was far from perfect, it was ripe with emotional and physical spontaneity — as open and vibrant a work as one could imagine from an artist of any age.Read More »

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A woman lives alone on the outskirts of a village in Russia. One day she receives a parcel she sent to her incarcerated husband, marked ‘return to sender’. Shocked and confused, the woman has no choice but to travel to the prison in a remote region of the country in search of an explanation. So begins the story of a battle against this impenetrable fortress, the prison where the forces of social evil are constantly at work. Braving violence and humiliation, in the face of all opposition, our protagonist embarks on a blind quest for justice.Read More »

In a neighborhood rife with racial tension, a local girl falls for a recent immigrant who is the victim of prejudice and shame.

“Emulsa of IMW London” wrote:

Balcony, the Iris Prize Winner of the Cardiff-based international LGBTQ short film festival, is a confounding 17-minute drama set in an estate of high rise flats and features two girls in a hostile environment. Tina is a lonely teenager who finds herself drawn to Dana, from Afghanistan, who lives with her father and does not mix with the rest of the kids.

“The problem about being surrounded by bad things is you get the urge to destroy anything good,” Tina shares with the viewer after we see her take a photo with Dana.Read More »

Unrest is the final part of a multidisciplinary trilogy (performances, films, installations) with the central theme of worry. The bodies of dancers Nathalie Remadi and Lilas Nagoya reconnects with the haunted aesthetic of La vie nouvelle in a frantic, sombre experience.
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Synopsis:
The fates of an apparently random group of strangers who each come into contact with a mysterious figure who they believe possesses the power to grant any wish, in return for which they must carry out a task he assigns them. Read More »

Quote:
A young woman stares across a table at the judge who is reviewing her case. Her gaze is both searingly intense and curiously blank. Holding herself preternaturally still, muscles tensed against the turmoil of emotions, she pleads to see the two-year-old daughter who has been removed from her care. “Not all the time, I accept that. But just to change her diaper, to love her.” If there’s a more achingly sad moment in any film of the 2017 Cannes film festival, it’s hard to imagine what it could be. For 12 Jours, veteran documentarian Raymond Depardon (Modern Life, Journal de France) turns his lens on to the desperate, broken souls of the patients who have been involuntarily committed into the care of a Lyon psychiatric institution.Read More »

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As we follow a mother (Jennifer Connelly) and her son (Cillian Murphy), we delve into a past marred by an accident that tears them apart. She will become a renowned artist and healer, and he will grow into his own as a peculiar falconer who bears the marks of a double absence. In the present, a young journalist (Mélanie Laurent) will bring about an encounter between the two that puts the very meaning of life and art into question, so that we may contemplate the possibility of living life to its fullest, despite the uncertainties littering our paths.Read More »

Toma and Ana meet as students in the literature faculty, and quickly fall in love.
The story of Ana and Toma and the thread of Ana’s mental illness, which runs through their relationship – their extremely challenging situation molds the life they share.

Who’s to blame when Toma’s girlfriend Ana, a college student, goes off the rails with incapacitating panic attacks? Tracing the causes of her mental ills back to her early family life, including a father who defected to the West, the film proposes various cures that range from prescription drugs to confession in church and — just a short step beyond that — the couch. It’s a smart film with engaging moments.
The games people play with each other and the trap of co-dependency are the main focus. As shrewd a psychologist as any therapist, Netzer adopts a warm approach to his characters but doesn’t let them off the hook when, on closer observation, their altruistic actions are revealed as controlling and manipulative. Read More »

Synopsis wrote:
A MANIFESTO FOR THE UN-COMMUNAL is a poem, a documentary, a video diary and a propaganda piece in praise of the outlandishly living.

Shot in Germany, Israel, Greece and Denmark, A MANIFESTO FOR THE UN-COMMUNAL is the convergence of the voices, the stories and the living landscapes of seven+ characters that live against the warming comfort of the self-righteousness of their herd. People undefined by their class, undefined by their education, revolting against any sense of state or non-state, polyglottes and polyfucked, traitors, un-marginalized and always out of the margin. Or, as Homer would put it, “the Lawless, those without Hearth or Clan” (Iliad, 9.63).Read More »