Drama

  • Mona Fastvold – The Sleepwalker (2014)

    2011-2020DramaMona FastvoldUSA

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    A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia’s secluded family estate. Their lives are violently disrupted upon the unexpected arrival of Kaia’s sister, Christine, and her fiancé, Ira.Read More »

  • Saskia Diesing – Nena (2014)

    2011-2020DramaNetherlandsSaskia Diesing

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    The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Nena, who is confronted with the suicide attempt of her handicapped father. At the same time she falls head over heels in love for the first time in her life with Carlo, whose father has just outed himself. Away from prying eyes of the adults – who struggle with failed marriages, blossoming love and insufferable physical decline – they push the boundaries of their friendship, love and sexuality. But while discovering her own lust for life, Nena realizes that her father’s existence is becoming more and more unbearable.Read More »

  • Dominik Graf – Die geliebten Schwestern AKA Beloved Sisters (2014)

    Drama2001-2010Dominik GrafGermanyRomance

    Synopsis
    The aristocratic sisters Charlotte and Caroline both fall in love with the controversial young writer and hothead Friedrich Schiller. Defying the conventions of their time, the sisters decide to share their love with Schiller. What begins playfully, almost as a game among the three of them, soon turns serious as it leads to the end of a pact.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Francesco, giullare di Dio AKA The Flowers of St. Francis [+Extras] (1950)

    1941-1950Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaItalyRoberto Rossellini

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    Quote:
    The Flowers of St. Francis—or, Francesco, giullare di Dio (Francis, God’s Jester), to give it its full title in Italian—is a delicate, fascinating hybrid, a film that is self-consciously, almost militantly, naive, and, as such, something of an anomaly in Rossellini’s body of work. Never again would his films attain the directness, simplicity, even purity that is so gloriously on display here, a work poised between the theological and the historical, between the Rossellini who emerged from neorealism into the full-blown spiritual crisis manifested in The Miracle, Stromboli, and Europa ’51, all set in postwar Italy, and the latter-day director whose abiding interest was in the depiction of history. Those later works often took religious subjects, but unlike in Acts of the Apostles, Augustine of Hippo, and The Messiah, Rossellini in The Flowers of St. Francis is less concerned with creating a portrait of a particular historical figure than he is with exploring the nature of spirituality, specifically, of “Franciscanism” itself and its impact on the medieval world.Read More »

  • Andrei Konchalovsky – Shy People (1987)

    1981-1990Andrei KonchalovskyDramaThe Cannon GroupUSA

    Diana (Jill Clayburgh) and her rebellious cocaine snorting daughter (Martha Plimpton) travel to the Louisiana bayou to meat their distant relatives. They find a wild gun-toting marsh woman (Barbara Hershey), and her grown children who she protects from the outside world still, going as far as putting one in a cage. Diana came to write an insightful article about her lost family, but may have gotten in over her head. The atmosphere is beautiful. There are some great performances by the brilliant Barbara Hershey (won best actress in 1987 Cannes), and Martha Plimpton. The turning point of the film is a bizarre rape sequence involving Martha Plimpton, cocaine, a big barrel of honey, a dozen goats, and Patrick Swayze’s brother, Don Swayze. This leads to both Jill Clayburg and Martha Plimpton being alone in the swamp, fighting for survival, and also a serious conflict within the familyRead More »

  • Menahem Golan – Mivtsa Yonatan aka Entebbe: Operation Thunderbolt (1977)

    1971-1980ActionDramaIsraelMenahem GolanThe Cannon Group

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    Plot Outline :
    In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked and forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda. The Jewish passengers were separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit to raid the airfield and release the hostages. The film is based on the true facts and follows the events since the flight’s takeoff and until the hostages’ return to Israel.Read More »

  • Georgi Daneliya – Osenniy marafon AKA Autumn Marathon (1979)

    Drama1971-1980ComedyGeorgi DaneliyaUSSR

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    Synopsis:

    A gentle, bittersweet tragicomedy, Autumn Marathon is about a middle-aged translator, Andrei Buzykin (Oleg Basilashvili), whose almost pathological niceness has trapped him in a seemingly endless series of awkward situations: his inability to turn anyone down has left him juggling a wife and mistress, on top of vast amounts of additional work usually done as unpaid favours for friends and students that’s constantly interfering with his own projects to the point where his career is put at risk.

    And because he can’t bear to hurt anyone, he’s always taking the easy way out – which invariably means constructing a vast edifice of lies that he can’t possibly keep track of, which has the equally inevitable side-effect of turning a fundamentally decent if weak-willed man into what looks like the epitome of a philandering boor. Half the time, his excuses are entirely genuine – he really did help his Danish friend Bill Hansen (Norbert Kuchinke) at a drying-out clinic, and stayed up all night with his less talented colleague Varvara (Galina Volchek) to help her on a difficult translation, but this counts for little when he’s so widely disbelieved. The title refers to his regular early morning jogging sessions with Bill – again, he’d much rather be doing something else, like staying in bed, but how can he possibly say no?Read More »

  • Gillian Robespierre – Obvious Child (2014)

    2011-2020ComedyDramaGillian RobespierreUSA

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    quote:
    Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child managed two great feats in one film: it announced Jenny Slate as a strong actor to watch and, more importantly, turned in a great romantic dramedy surrounding the topic of abortion. The film wasn’t a polemic or political diatribe, nor did it toss off the subject matter flippantly. Instead, Obvious Child addressed various aspects of love, modern adulthood, and the implications of parenthood and abortions with aplomb. As written by Robespierre, the film was as light and hilarious as could be expected while doing an impressive balancing act by being sensitive to the realistic decisions women face. It helped too that the cast turned in performances perfectly in keeping with the tone of the film: they were sad without being soul-wrenchingly sad and funny without being glib or quirky about it. But above all else, Slate’s performance and Robespierre’s film were pleasingly human.
    -TinyMixTapes (#20 on their “Favorite 30 Films of 2014” list)Read More »

  • Pantelis Voulgaris – Nyfes AKA Brides (2004)

    Drama2001-2010GreecePantelis Voulgaris

    Summer of 1922.
    Photographer Norman Harris and Niki are sailing to America aboard the same ship. Norman in first class and Niki in third, together with some 700 other brides. They all carry the photograph of a bridegroom they have never met in their little trunks as well as their bridal gown. Norman is touched when he sees the brides in third class. Niki is the one who makes the greatest impression on him. Gradually they get to know each other and fall in love. Brides is a story about strong emotions, about dilemmas, about conscience, about a responsible attitude. It is about the little moments, the glances, the touches, the “yeses” an the “nos” that count in life.

    Executive producer: Martin ScorseseRead More »

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