Canada

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Pierre Leduc leaves his job as a university lecturer in an effort to escape the world, only to have his plans thwarted as two family members reach out to him: first, his dying father, who wants to leave him a fortune of ill-gotten gains, and then the young daughter whom he abandoned years ago.

Québécois cinema has often explored the bonds that keep us together, but rarely has the subject been addressed so elegantly or so powerfully. An obsessed scholar attempts to withdraw from the world but finds personal ties drawing him back into the family he had left behind, in this novelistic, beautifully modulated drama from acclaimed Québécois filmmaker Bernard Émond. Tout ce que tu possèdes is characterized by a meditative style, a novelist’s eye for detail and startlingly beautiful grace notes. @TiffRead More »

OCCUPY LOVE captures the heart of the movement of movements that is sweeping the planet in response to today’s economic and environmental crises. ‘Philosopher-filmmaker’ Velcrow Ripper travels to history-making hot spots, asking the question, ‘How can crisis create a love story?’ Scenes include the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square, Spain’s Indignado movement, Occupy Wall Street NYC, The Maple Spring in Quebec, and indigenous activists at the Alberta Tar Sands. The film explores the aspects of this arising that take the form of what Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘Love in action.’ Woven throughout is a deep exploration on the meaning and importance of ‘public love’ – the love of humanity, the love of the planet.Read More »

From IMDb :
Animals/People: Along the rhythm of the changing seasons they watch one another. Bestiary unfolds like a filmed picture book about mutual observation, about peculiar perception. A contemplation of a stable imbalance, and of lose, tranquil and indefinable elements.

From www.berlinale.de (Berlin Film Festival) :

A drawing course, a safari park and a taxidermist’s workshop: three settings in which humans and animals meet. The focus of observation is on relationships of sight and perception, which often reflect unequal power structures at the same time. In the process, the film also seems to be considering the question of how animals can be filmed.
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Carl’s life is reduced to two things: receiving lows and, despite everything, persists in carrying out a “normal” existence.
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A young man goes shopping with his mother after a tumultuous night out. The conversation taking place on route is filled with uncomfortable dialogue between two generations.Read More »

Lelia (Lauren Lee Smith) is a happily unattached, sexually voracious young woman who satisfies her instable appetite for sex with a host of young male bed partners. But all that changes when a chance encounter has Lelia meets and beings an affair with David (Eric Balfour) an artist looking for a committing relationship. David is just as sexually aggressive and ravenous as Lelia and whenever they get together, they grow more hopelessly entangled, both physically and emotionally.Read More »

synopsis
Don McKellar wrote and directed this comedy-drama about the last night of the world, part of the 12-film Arte series of movies about the Millennium. Set in Toronto, Patrick (McKellar) endures a faux Christmas celebration with his family while Sandra (Sandra Oh) tries to get across town to commit suicide with her husband, a gas company employee Duncan (David Cronenberg). Meanwhile, Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) hopes to achieve sexual satisfaction with several women on his list. Still mourning his dead wife, Patrick plans his last moments alone, until he and Sandra crosspaths. Shown in the Directors Fortnight section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.Read More »

Centuries ago, in what would become the Canadian Arctic, Atuat is promised to the malevolent Oki, son of the leader of their tribe. But Atuat loves the good-natured Atanarjuat, who ultimately finds a way to marry her. Oki’s sister, Puja also fancies Atanarjuat, and when she causes strife between him and his brother Amaqjuaq, Oki seizes the opportunity to wreak a terrible revenge on Atanarjuat.

Apparently the first ever feature film to be made in the Inuktitut (Canadian Eskimo) language, this epic tale recounts the ancient Inuit legend of Atanarjuat.

Set some thousand years ago in the settlement of Igloolik near the Arctic Circle, “Atanarjuat” relates how shamanic forces spark deep divisions within a community of nomadic Inuit.Read More »

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Synopsis

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
—Socrates

Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets…

In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.Read More »