2011-2020

  • Thomas Cailley – Les combattants aka Love at First Fight (2014)

    2011-2020ComedyFranceRomanceThomas Cailley

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    It’s summer and Arnaud begins work for the family business, building garden sheds with his brother. Meeting under unusual circumstances, he becomes fascinated with the surly Madeleine.
    Obsessed by survival and gripped by prophecies of doom, Madeleine determines to join an elite commando unit. Arnaud follows. As they begin at an army training camp, their bodies and emotions are put to the test.
    An improbable mix of teen-movie, rom-com, and pre-apocalypse film, stretching the limits of each genre.Read More »

  • Nicolas Wackerbarth – Halbschatten AKA Everyday Objects (2013)

    2011-2020DramaGermanyNicolas Wackerbarth

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    On an overcast summer’s day, Merle arrives at her lover Romuald’s villa, jacket and luggage in hand, to find the doors are locked. He had invited her to visit him in the south of France but seems to have headed off somewhere. She thus has to come to some arrangement with his uncooperative children, help celebrate Emma’s 13th birthday and put up with Felix’s impudence, the 16-year-old son who sees her presence as a provocation.
    It doesn’t take long for the host’s absence to become barely noticeable. The plot centres on Merle, on her attempts to fit in, to take on this unexpected role as naturally as possible. In a particularly striking scene, she gets into an argument with the local baker, who refuses to give her a cake ordered for Emma’s birthday. Merle loses the battle of wills. When Romuald finally calls, she decides to side with his children rather than her distant lover, and quietly enjoys her breakthrough. With great empathy and subtlety, Nicolas Wackerbarth’s Halbschatten creates a portrait of a person ill at ease with being the centre of attention, in the glaring sunlight.Read More »

  • Mona Fastvold – The Sleepwalker (2014)

    2011-2020DramaMona FastvoldUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia’s secluded family estate. Their lives are violently disrupted upon the unexpected arrival of Kaia’s sister, Christine, and her fiancé, Ira.Read More »

  • Saskia Diesing – Nena (2014)

    2011-2020DramaNetherlandsSaskia Diesing

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Nena, who is confronted with the suicide attempt of her handicapped father. At the same time she falls head over heels in love for the first time in her life with Carlo, whose father has just outed himself. Away from prying eyes of the adults – who struggle with failed marriages, blossoming love and insufferable physical decline – they push the boundaries of their friendship, love and sexuality. But while discovering her own lust for life, Nena realizes that her father’s existence is becoming more and more unbearable.Read More »

  • John Maclean – Slow West (2015)

    2011-2020Euro WesternsJohn MacleanUnited KingdomWestern

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Slow West follows a 16-year-old boy on a journey across 19th Century frontier America in search of the woman he loves, while accompanied by mysterious traveler Silas.Read More »

  • André Singer – Night Will Fall (2014)

    2011-2020André SingerDocumentaryUnited Kingdom

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:

    When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army cameramen, revealing for the first time the horror of what had happened.

    Using British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock to make a film that would provide evidence of the Nazi’s unspeakable crimes. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US governments, the film was shelved. In this compelling documentary by André Singer (executive producer, The Act of Killing), the full story of the filming of the camps and the fate of Bernstein’s project, which has now been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums, can finally be told.Read More »

  • Gillian Robespierre – Obvious Child (2014)

    2011-2020ComedyDramaGillian RobespierreUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    quote:
    Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child managed two great feats in one film: it announced Jenny Slate as a strong actor to watch and, more importantly, turned in a great romantic dramedy surrounding the topic of abortion. The film wasn’t a polemic or political diatribe, nor did it toss off the subject matter flippantly. Instead, Obvious Child addressed various aspects of love, modern adulthood, and the implications of parenthood and abortions with aplomb. As written by Robespierre, the film was as light and hilarious as could be expected while doing an impressive balancing act by being sensitive to the realistic decisions women face. It helped too that the cast turned in performances perfectly in keeping with the tone of the film: they were sad without being soul-wrenchingly sad and funny without being glib or quirky about it. But above all else, Slate’s performance and Robespierre’s film were pleasingly human.
    -TinyMixTapes (#20 on their “Favorite 30 Films of 2014” list)Read More »

  • Liv Ullmann – Miss Julie (2014)

    Drama2011-2020Liv UllmannNorway

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The “norms” of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play “Miss Julie” is the prime example, although it’s evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. “Miss Julie” plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night’s Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that “Miss Julie is crazy!” Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work.Read More »

  • Brett Morgen – Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)

    USA2011-2020Brett MorgenDocumentaryMusical

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The documentary is directed by Brett Morgen who began work on it in 2007 when Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, approached him with the idea,] It is the first documentary about Kurt Cobain to be made with the cooperation of his family. Morgen and his team were given access to the entirety of Cobain’s personal and family archives. The documentary includes footage from various Nirvana performances and unheard songs, as well as unreleased home movies, recordings, artwork, photography, journals, demos, and songbooks] Morgen used the interviews in the film Lenny as a model for the interviews in the film. The film’s title, Montage of Heck, takes its name from a musical collage that was created by Cobain with a 4-track cassette recorder in about 1988, of which there are two versions; one is about thirty-six minutes long and the other about eight minutes long. Several of the film’s scenes were animated by Stefan Nadelman and Hisko Hulsing. Jeff Danna wrote an original score for the film. The film was co-produced by HBO Documentary Films and Universal Pictures International Entertainment Content Group. Cobain and Courtney Love’s only daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was a co-executive producer on the film.<Read More »

Back to top button