Drama

The movie focuses on the plight of ten war orphans hailing from different cities across Japan. With nowhere to go, they scavenge around train stations, scratching out an existence by means of black market work for a one-legged tramp whilst avoiding being picked up by the police for vagrancy. Soon however, they find a more inspiring role model in the figure of a nameless soldier just repatriated after the war. An orphan himself, the soldier also has no home to return to, and so sets out across the country with the kids in tow in search of work before settling on the goal of leading them to the orphanage where he himself grew up.Read More »

Footage from Shylock’s monologue filmed by Orson Welles in connection with his unfinished film The Merchant of Venice.
According to the accompanying notes by Hervé Pichard, head of restoration at La Cinémathèque Francaise, the rushes were restored in 2025 by the film museum. The 4K work was carried out using a 16mm double-strip work print (Eastmancolor film, 1969) deposited in its collections by Welles’ longtime companion and collaborator Oja Kodar.Read More »

This hard-to-find Fukasaku/Kurahara collaboration is an interesting coming-of-age story. The boy Shisuke grows up in a coal mining community in Kyushu, during and after the Second World War, and the viewer is treated to the
circumstances that shape the young man who emerges. Read More »

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A psychological thriller of a grieving mother turned cold-blooded avenger with a twisty master plan to pay back those who were responsible for her daughter’s death.Read More »

AMG: Cristiano Bortone’s inspirational Italian-language drama Red Like the Sky recounts the incredible true story of the early life of blind sound editor Mirco Mencacci. The victim of a freak childhood accident in 1970 that robbed him permanently of his sight, Mencacci is shipped off to a Genoan boarding school for Catholic boys, per the stipulations of the Italian government. Not one to be daunted or repressed, Mirco forges a heartwarming friendship with the daughter of the school gatekeeper; the two abscond together, via her bicycle, on a series of secret trips to the closest cinema. Meanwhile, at the school, Mirco also begins recording his own sound dramas with the school’s tape recorder and the use of audio books in the institution’s library. In time, the innovative young man invites other students to participate, who eagerly accept, and Mirco uses the activity to help each fellow student identify his own innate gifts and pursue his dreams. But when he leads a cadre of boys on a covert expedition to the cinema, the school administrators take swift and decisive action.Read More »

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From more than 65 hours of film footage, acclaimed American independent filmmaker
Robert Kramer crafted this epic portrait of the famous highway that runs from Maine
to Key West, Florida. Route One/USA shows how what was once the most traveled roadway
in the world has become, in the words of the filmmaker, “a thin stretch of asphalt
cutting through the dreams of a nation.”Read More »

Minna, 19, lives in a small dusty town. She and her friend Simone roam the streets, have tedious jobs, and try to entertain themselves by falling in love with the wrong men. Minna is still affected by her mother’s death a few years ago which has left her with heartache and uncertainty. Gradually Minna understands that she has to break up from her old life. One day opportunity comes knocking and Minna sees a chance to move on. A touching and comical film about a young girl’s quest to find love and happiness.
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Synopsis:
‘A lush, baroque adaptation of Jean Racine’s 1670 tragedy about a Roman emperor who bends to popular will and declines to marry the Palestinian queen he loves.’
– IMDbRead More »

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Shunji Iwai’s Lily Chou-Chou offers eternal peace. She’s ethereal, the rebirth of death (indeed, she was born the moment Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon), and all-powerful, a voice for a pop-cyber culture that feeds on her Björkness. In All About Lily Chou-Chou, fans of the fictional singer use her “amniotic” music to detach themselves from the violence that consumes Japanese culture. Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) is obsessed with Lily: He gets busted for shoplifting one of her CDs and engages in endless conversations on the website Liliphilia with fellow Lily-heads, “connecting” with the so-called ether that is Lily, just like he melds into colorful rice fields whenever he listens to Lily sing. While Yuichi is quiet and reserved, his online handle (“philia”) suggests a boy erupting with adult emotions, and though his friendship with “blue cat” is elusive it still feels within reach. Such is the dreaminess and possibility the film taps into.Read More »