Crime

A trio of rum-runners during prohibition in the 1930s engage in a menage-a-trois after business hours.Read More »

Ho Jun is a student from Beijing who is working in a cattle slaughter house in Tokyo. He lives with other Chinese friends in cheap lodgings. All of them find it difficult to adapt to Japanese culture. To make matters worse Ho Jun and some friends devise a plot to rob a local pinball gambling house – the gangster who owns the house finds them out and threatens to send Ho Jun back to China.Read More »

With everything to lose, the desperate band together. Tatsuo, a young foot soldier in the Yakuza, seeks revenge when his prostitute girlfriend dies after a session with a high-ranking Japanese senator with a taste for torture. He’s sets out on a “kamikaze” mission to kill his bosses and the politician. Along the way, he acquires the aid of a taxi driver, Kantake, who has recently returned to Japan after living in South America for several decades. and is struggling to cope with poverty and the prejudices of native-born Japanese. The two form an unlikely and eventually take on father-son roles. Kantake proves to be an invaluable ally in Tatsuo’s quest to take out the mob, the senator and everyone else who gets in the way.Read More »

Quote:
As anyone who’s watched “The Way of the Gun” knows, the furthest distance between two points is always between a kidnapper and his money. In “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance”, though, getting the money is easy. It’s staying alive long enough to spend it that’s the problem.

Taking its cue from the Pang brothers’ similarly excellent “Bangkok Dangerous”, “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” stars Shin Ha-kyun as Ryu, a deaf and dumb steelworker who kidnaps his boss’ daughter in order to pay for a kidney operation for his beloved sister. Nothing goes according to plan, and what ought to have been easy money soon turns into blood money.Read More »

Quote:
A documentary about the violence in Mexico told from the word of those who have suffered the pain and those who make the pain.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
Hong Kong auteur and Festival favourite Johnnie To returns with Life Without Principle, a suspenseful drama starring Denise Ho, Lau Ching Wan and Richie Jen. The film takes a hard look at Hong Kong’s money-obsessed culture through three characters whose destinies collide one fateful day.

Teresa, a customer service manager at a bank, is under pressure to make her sales quota with a high-risk investment fund. Although she knows the sale is only for the bank’s benefit, she pitches it to some of her clients, including a shady loan shark and a clueless housewife.Read More »

Science researcher Hyeon-cheol demonstrates with co-workers against the company president, who stole an important semiconductor chip and is attempting to flee to the United States. Meanwhile, the company president makes his escape from the protesters in an ambulance. During his escape, the executive cuts a wound in his arm and implants the chip there. While, Hyeon-cheol and co-worker Han Jin-soo head for home, Han Jin-Soo is hit by a speeding car. Hyeon-cheol thinks it isn’t an accident. He contacts Han Jin-Soo’s daughter Dong-Hwa and they meet at the police station. After visiting her father at the hospital, Dong-Hwa becomes worried about how to pay for her father’s hospital bills. On a TV at the hospital, they learn that the company president died from a heart attack. Hyeon-cheol and Dong-Hwa then come up with the idea to steal the body of the company president for ransom. Their plan goes somewhat according to plan, but Hyeon-cheol and Dong-Hwa soon realize that they didn’t steal a corpse, but an actual live person Jin-oh!
—Stanislav S, Sochi, RussiaRead More »

Synopsis
Dina (Maria Santiago) is a teenager brought up by her grandmother, employed as a housekeeper for a fairly well-off family. Since Dina only has her grandmother, she spends her time fantasizing about her life and reading comic-book love stories – activities that do nothing to improve her dim perspective of reality. Due to these handicaps and her own inexperience, she gets involved with Django (Luis Lucas), a shady character who decides to use her as bait to attract men and then rob them. One day when both are in a taxi with robbery in mind, the driver gets suspicious so Django shoots him, and so does Dina. She escapes and runs away – though it seems like she has learned too little too late. This story unfolds against a time of upheaval in Portugal (mid-1970s) when the military government is formulating a constitution and social changes are happening everywhere.Read More »

Sonny lives with his intellectually disabled older brother and works as a bellhop at a second-rate hotel. This changes when Monique, a beautiful and suicidal nutcase, checks in. Sonny is offered a part in a heist that goes wrong.

This film is based on the book A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson.Read More »