Arthouse

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With its focus on the emotional aftermath of a religious cult’s terrorist attack on Tokyo, “Distance” was always going to invite comparisons with the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system in 1995.

Yet, rather than simply recreating that tragedy, “Distance” takes us into a far more complex, and decidedly more unsettling, drama about loss and bereavement.Three years after the fictional Ark of Truth group has contaminated Tokyo’s water supply with a genetically-engineered virus, leaving 128 people dead and 8,000 injured, four of the dead cult members’ relatives meet to pay their respects to their loved ones at the lake where their ashes were scattered.Read More »

The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster
is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial
speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.Read More »

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“There is no such thing as a murderer, only people who kill.” With these words director Cristi Puiu qualifies his careful study of contemporary Romanian society and of fatal acts such as murder. The film focuses on 42-year-old Viorel who is going through a gloomy period of life that leads him to the point of killing without it being clear whether or not it’s his divorce and his conflict with loved ones provoking him to open fire. The film attempts to demystify the act of murder, rendering it as something in no way spectacular, just as there is nothing remarkable about a person who commits murder. Read More »

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Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cinema studies alienation through mainly minimalist means. Since Clouds of May (Mayis Sikintisi) and Distant (Uzak), which won the Grand Prix and a double prize for Best Actor at Cannes, the most conspicuous trait that makes him an auteur is his personal touch. Emotional distances filled in with long silences and uncertainties on faces in close-ups, supported by beautifully shot landscapes, are his trademarks. With a poetic, yet almost painfully honest approach, he passionately continues depicting the complexity of the human soul and its divine dilemmas. His talent is often comparable to great directors such as Bergman, Antonioni, Bresson, Tarkovsky and he clearly emphasizes the motto “less is more.”Read More »

Synopsis:
The streets of a big city are full of dead bodies but people seem not to notice and pass by indifferently. At the behest of the authorities, the bodies of those citizens who were killed because the rebels should serve as a warning. Antigone wants to bury her brother. A young foreigner who speaks a foreign language and will offer his cooperation. Together, they try to bury the dead, but are discovered and killed. However, the example of the two is followed by other young people who take to the streets to continue to bury the corpses, again defying the authoritiesRead More »

Vera Baxter is talking to a woman. It seems that the woman was attracted to her by hearing her name called out: “Baxter, Vera Baxter.” In response to her new friend’s queries, Vera recounts the story of her life.
The story begins with his marriage to Jean. Vera is a faithful wife to the point that her husband pays a man to be unfaithful to him, according to him, adultery paid revitalize the desire of the couple. But this does not happen and Vera will not see him anymore.Read More »

In Ostkreuz (1991), Michael Klier tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanys during the Wende, and deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany. (Filmgalerie 451)Read More »

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“Through and Through” is a legendary feature focusing on radicalization of cinematic language. The film transgresses traditional methods of narrative construction, which is characteristic of its genre. This non-conentional treatment of the cinematic form places this film somewhere between experimental art and cinema, in a domain that does not properly belong to either field. Krolikiewicz’s radical debut is representative of his parallel pursuits – as a filmmaker as well as film theorist – and employs his crucial theory of “out – of – frame cinematographic space.” The first film in his trilogy (together with Dancing Hawk and Endless Claims), which portray typical Polish anti-heroes imprisoned by reality, “Through and Through” criticizes the nihilism and depravity created by the socio-political system.Read More »

“Mother, come and see how beautiful Damascus is!”, little Omar cries out to his mother, a young woman drained by mourning. The widely acclaimed, partially autobiographical, Dreams of the City marks the turn towards auteur Syrian cinema, resurrecting the memories of childhood of the working poor. A young widow and her two sons are forced to move from their native Quneytra to Damascus, where her father forces them to fend for themselves. Against the backdrop of successive military coups that punctuated the turbulent 1950s in Syria, Adib, the eldest of the boys comes of age in the vast and overwhelming urban magic of Damascus. The image of mosques, faces and the greenery of Damascus swirl by as Adib witnesses a dizzying and violent day in the city. At last, the wounded child gazes at the full moon; the city shatters against it.Read More »