Summer 1900, Switzerland.
Elisabeth, 17, is about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village, walking in her sister’s step to uncover the mystery of her death, Elisabeth is slowly driven to rebel against the local order and for her right to live her life.Read More »
In the 19th century, a wandering drunkard in Italy is cast out of his village for a crime. He is exiled to Tierra del Fuego, where he searches for a mythical treasure, paving his way toward redemption.Read More »
When her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown, the introvert Eva is forced to take on Zara’s job as a Foley artist. She struggles to create sounds for a commercial featuring a horse, and then a horsetail starts growing out of her body. Empowered by her tail, she lures a botanist into an affair, through a game of submission. Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice.Read More »
This highly symbolic Iranian drama (shot in black-and-white) revolves around the most important figure in a remote rural village. That figure is the village’s sole cow, owned by Mashdi Hassan (Ezat Entezani). The beginning of the film makes clear just how vital the cow is to the life of the village and how much Mashdi and his neighbors cherish it. When the cow is threatened and then killed by members of a nearby clan, Mashdi becomes so distraught that he is gradually transformed into a cow himself. One highlight of this film is the glimpse it offers into a style of rural life which has gone unchanged for thousands of years.Read More »
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“Eternal Light” (“Amžinoji šviesa”) (1988) – Lithuanian feature film, one of the most remarkable cinema works of the country during the last decade. In the story of Rimantas Šavelis the film director Puipa returns to the village, roots, to the end of fifties – the period, traditional in the Lithuanian cinema. Here, contrary to the films of such type, Puipa shows the post-war period not in a publicistic, but a lyrical and subtle way. Though weapons can be seen in the hands of the characters, shots are not resounding here, and the general plot is limited to the emotional relationship among four main characters. A land-surveyor Anicetas (actor Vidas Petkevičius) has an aversion to his persecutor Pranė (actress Daiva Stubraitė) and marries the loved Amilė (actress Virginija Kelmelytė) from the other village.Read More »
When a Mongolian nomadic family’s newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.Read More »
Anthony Perkins, a young sculptor with a weird penchant for waking up in strange hotels with his memory wiped clean and bloodied hands, invites a former professor (Michel Piccoli) to the Gatsby-like provincial manor presided over by his powerful tycoon father (Orson Welles). Welcomed by Welles’ young wife (Marlene Jobert), Piccoli soon finds a nest of rats beneath the bourgeoisie voluptuousness — a clan bound in a circle of illicit romance, blackmail, faked burglaries and, of course, murder.Read More »
PLOT: In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one’s foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.Read More »
Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjöberg’s visually innovative, Cannes Grand Prix-winning adaptation of August Strindberg’s renowned 1888 play brings to scalding life the excoriating words of the stage’s preeminent surveyor of all things rotten in the state of male-female relations. Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes and classes that ensues when a wealthy businessman’s daughter (Anita Björk, in a fiercely emotional performance) falls for her father’s bitter servant. Celebrated for its unique cinematic style (and censored upon its first release in the United States for its adult content), Sjöberg’s film was an important turning point in Scandinavian cinema.Read More »