2011-2020

Quote:
73-year-old De Oliveira decides to make a personal movie that his audience will only know once heis dead. In 1982, the director takes the decision to make a movie about (and in) his (ex) house, in which he lived for over 40 years. The initial still shot is held for a long while with the presence oftrees in the garden of his house in Oporto. De Oliveira himself introduces the film and speaks all the credits out. The voices of a man and a woman guide us for most of the first part, in a sort of preliminary and formal tour around the totality of the house. They remain out of frame and the camera perspective is not necessarily theirs. After a few minutes, we see De Oliveira for the first time, writing on a typewriter at his desk. The most surprising element, in narrative terms, is the recreation of his arrest and his stay in a dungeon in times of the Portuguese military regime, during the 60s. Right from the start, the word memoryis a relevant operative term; the confession becomes explicit around half through the film.Read More »

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If Joaquin Phoenix met Carole Lombard in their twenties by the sea you would get the sizzle we feel in Jakob Lass’ Love Steaks.

Clemens (Franz Rogowski) arrives as a trainee at a Northern German seaside spa. He does massages, aromatherapy, and is being taught how to suck bad energy from the guests by circling his hands above their bodies. Lara (Lana Cooper) is a playful cook in the resort kitchen, constantly initiating acts of mayhem for her colleagues to react to.

As living quarters, Clemens is allotted a spacious storage room at the spa, where laundry carts are kept moving about and unused replacement garbage cans sit ominously. He has no private bathroom – no privacy to speak of at all, as there is no door – but a fabulous view of the ocean. Clemens is shy, sincere and in over his head on all accounts. Lara is bold and sexy-stupid, not in the dumb-blonde romantic comedy vein, rather mad-cap provocative. She seduces with a daring absurdity and her tango with Clemens is superb. Rogowski, a trained dancer, gives Clemens the fragility he needs to balance her shenanigans.Read More »

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Centred in the two thousand year old city of Guimarães, three renowned directors, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway and Edgar Pêra, explore 3D and its evolution in the world of cinema. How does 3D affect the audience and their perceptions?Read More »

Story
This stunning feature documentary chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening and tensions soar, the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor. With incredible access to both longtime residents of Leith and white supremacists, the film examines a small community in the plains struggling for sovereignty against an extreme vision.Read More »

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This acerbic biographical comedy subtitled “I Think You Should Calm Down, Ladies…!” is loosely inspired by the life of renowned photographer and celebrity Jan Saudek, outstandingly portrayed by Karel Roden. The film, appealing in its theme and treatment, focuses on the maestro’s relationships with women, specifically the devoted Líba, who enjoys subtle yet complete control over Jan (her character is undeniably inspired by his former partner Sára Saudková). In addition to numerous indelicate scenes, the brief flashbacks also reveal Jan’s ill-fated past (conflicts with the police and state security agents, a nightmare from his childhood), and there’s also room for staging Saudek’s famous photographic nudes, for which the models were usually morbidly obese. Pavlásková also exposes the artist’s quirky personality, where exhibitionism and vanity go hand in hand with Saudek’s fragility and male naivety, and his desire to extricate himself from his private solitude.Read More »

Synopsis:
A taxi driver takes a young woman at a small Iranian hospital. As long as he gets there he realizes that he must take crucial decisions that may change his life.

Review:
Too few risks have been taken in Iranian mainstream cinema to depict the oppression of Iranian women but Reza Mirkarimi’s film Emrooz (Today, 2014) subtly chronicles a day in the life of a pregnant single mother named Sedighe who desperately looks for support from a taxi driver named Younes. The film’s portrayal of the pregnant woman can be seen as evidence of the lack of social support for single mothers in Iran and how Iranian women have no legal right to defend their motherhood without the support of a child’s father.Read More »

Synopsis
A never-before-seen woodsman mysteriously appears aboard a submarine that’s been trapped deep under water for months with an unstable cargo. As the terrified crew make their way through the corridors of the doomed vessel, they find themselves on a voyage into the origins of their darkest fears.Read More »

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Joey Izzo is an award winning writer/director whose work has been screened at top festivals worldwide, including Cannes Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and San Francisco International Film Festival. His recent short film, Stepsister, is the first film from San Francisco to be selected for Cannes’s Cinéfondation Official Selection.

Quote:
Fearing her own, displacement, Anna torments her stepbrother’s new fiancee.Read More »

Synopsis:
Roger spends the winter in a cabin in the woods at an army base. His husband Frank is on a mission in Djibouti and doesn’t communicate much, while their adopted teenage daughter Roxy is starting to get rebellious. Roger finds support with four women and an attractive farmer/boxing trainer, who are also all divorced from their better halves. They dispel the boredom by philosophising about life, seduction attempts and thinking up nicknames for their private parts.
In four seasons, an ironic melodrama unfolds with absurdist accents and conceptual tendencies. Benjamin Crotty, who grew up alongside an American army base, uses both French and American cultural elements, ranging from eco-architecture to dialogues based on texts from American TV series.
Fort Buchanan is a long version of the short, similarly-named film that was also screened in Rotterdam.Read More »