Drama

Also known as At Great Cost, this adaptation of a story by Mikhailo Kotsyubinsky—a Ukrainian writer executed in the Stalinist purges but rehabilitated in 1955—anticipates the wave of Sixties poetic cinema in its focus on star-crossed lovers and its celebration of nature. Set in the 1930s, the film begins as Solomia is forced into an arranged marriage. She escapes with her lover, Ostep, and for a while it looks as if the fugitives will make a clean getaway. Yet eventually they come to the attention of the police, who mistake them for being part of a gang of thieves. One of the major figures of the earlier current of socialist realism, Donskoy, in one of his first post-Stalin era productions, here loosens his style to reveal a delicate romanticism rarely felt in his earlier films.Read More »

Plot: A love triangle emerges around a rock and roll musician, his protege, and his wife in 1980s Russia.

The plot is based on little-known facts of Viktor Tsoi’s (Teo Yoo) life and unfolds in the summer of the early 1980s in Leningrad. The main storyline of the film tells the story of the relationship between the 19-year-old Tsoi, 26-year-old Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk), and his wife Natalia (Irina Starshenbaum), as well as the formation of the Leningrad Rock Club and the recording of Tsoi’s first album.Read More »

When powerful outlaw “Boca de Ouro” dies, a reporter interviews his former lover Guigui, to try to outline his personality. But the woman offers him three different versions of the facts, following the changes of her own personal feelings towards the man.

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Nelson Rodrigues’ Rashomon-lite gangster melodrama gets a purposive physical rendering on the hands of Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The filmmaker always described this as gun for hire work, but it is one of his most dramatic exact films and the cast is terrific. (Filipe Furtado)Read More »

After having been run out of New York City’s Chinatown, brothel owner Madame Olga moves her ring of prostitutes and criminals to a deserted ore mine and starts over.

“As the original negative for Olga’s House of Shame is incomplete, the restoration process benefitted from a variety of different sources in order to revive both picture and soundtrack. Given the fragmented nature of the film, it is extraordinary Olga can still exist in its full authenticity.” — NWRRead More »

“This made-for-television film was based on Olle Hedberg’s script, which Ingmar Bergman had directed for the City Theatre of Hälsingborg as early as in 1945, and as a radio play the following year. Bergman, who called the play ‘an unpleasant piece’, used stage actors from Malmö. The scarce reviews of the film focused on Bergman’s faiblesse for the puppet theatre and the morality play, with the result that the characters functioned as types.”Read More »

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Two buntings—small, sparrow-like birds—sit in a cage on the back of a bike in the opening moments of Aleksai Fedorchenko’s Silent Souls. The man peddling the bike (and narrating the film from beyond the grave) is Aist (Igor Sergeyev), a factory worker and photographer who descends from the Finno-Ugric tribe known as the Meryans. After work one day, Aist agrees to help his boss and friend, Miron (Yuri Tsurilo), perform the last Meryan rites for Miron’s recently departed wife. The two buntings are brought along, flittering and chirping in their cage, on the duo’s trip, while Miron reminisces about the erotic moments with his wife and Aist drifts on to think about rituals he had once indulged in with his father.Read More »

In a fortress perched on the top of a mountain, a “democratically elected” President and his closest collaborators are getting ready for a state celebration. Foreign chiefs of state and dignitaries of all sorts are expected. But in the morning of the event, he wakes up to find the country inflamed the streets in turmoil. As the day goes on, rebellion worsens. Meanwhile, expected guests are withdrawing from the party one after another… Despite the situation, the President does not want to face reality and refuses to resign. Overwhelmed, he plunges into a deep mental confusion as the events follow their course.Read More »

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The story of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, who has served as Prime Minister of Italy seven times since the restoration of democracy in 1946.

Roger Ebert wrote:
They would seem to be opposites, but on the basis of two recent films, the longtime Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the longtime fashion emperor Valentino were surprisingly similar. Both are seen as intensely private, rarely happy, single-minded in pursuit of their ambitions, cool in their personal relationships, and ruling as if by divine right. A difference is that Valentino was never accused of criminal activities.Read More »

Agostina is a maid turned prostitute during World War II. She sends all the money she makes to the local priest in her home village for safekeeping. After the war is over, Agostina and her friend plan to open a clothing store so they return to her home island to collect the money from the priest. But after arriving there, Agostina learns in shock that the priest has been dead for more than a year and that his eccentric successor mistook the received money for donations and spent all of it on building a new orphanage for war orphans. To make matters worse, other islanders think that Agostina is now a millionaire and beg her to help them financially.Read More »