Drama

August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The “norms” of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play “Miss Julie” is the prime example, although it’s evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. “Miss Julie” plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night’s Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that “Miss Julie is crazy!” Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work.Read More »

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The 1975 film by Georgi Daneliya “Afonya” was an unexpected commercial hit in USSR. The main character Borshev A.N. is a locksmith who spends his free time, as well as working hours, drinking with his buddies whom he even doesn’t recognize the next day after another heavy drink. His wife leaves him, his boss places him on probation, his whole life is falling a part but he doesn’t realize it. There is only one person who can save him – nurse Katya whom he met on dances and didn’t pay much attention to… Daneliya manages to balance in the film satire and drama, quotes from the film gained a cult status in Russia and other former countries of USSR.Read More »

Anna (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen) is a newly graduated theologian who has given up trying to have a baby with her husband Frank (Lars Ranthe). After accepting a temporary post as chaplain in a women’s prison, she soon hears stories about a new inmate called Kate (Trine Dyrholm) and her magical touch that can cure prisoners suffering from heroin withdrawal. Even though Kate detects that Anna is pregnant even before Anna knows it herself, Anna remains sceptical of the inmate’s powers, and horrified by the crime that got her convicted in the first place – but then an awful moral dilemma arises that requires Anna to believe in miracles.Read More »

Out of the blue Anna, an actress at a provincial community theater, gets fired. Fresh off the stage, she suddenly finds herself at the local job center. On the urging of her theater-mad case worker, she takes on an acting course for seven “hard-to-place clients“ — as a compulsory training measure. Overcoming huge resistance, Anna forms the bunch of frustrated lone wolves into a group and starts to rehearse Antigone with them. This gives new impetus to the participants’ own private dramas, while Anna too experiences a sort of “comeback” for which she wasn’t quite prepared.Read More »

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[A] radical reinvention of [Hamlet was] carried out by Celestino Coronado in a 16mm-and-video project made at the Royal College of Art in 1976. Taking its cue from Hamlet’s speech to Gertrude concerning “the counterfeit presentment of two brothers”, Coronado casts identical twins Anthony and David Meyer as not only twin Hamlets but also the Ghost, Laertes and the Player King, with Helen Mirren playing both Gertrude and Ophelia. Though the budget was admittedly tiny, this was not a money-saving device: this doubling served to emphasise the way the play’s characters frequently mirror each other in method and motivation.Read More »

A 1962 Soviet black-and-white drama film directed by Mikhail Romm about nuclear particle physics, Soviet scientists
(physicists) and their relationship. The film won the Crystal Globe Award in 1962.

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Two young physicists, an afflicted experimenter Dmitri Gusev (Batalov) and a sceptical physicist-theorist Ilya Kulikov (Smoktunovsky) carry out nuclear researches at a Siberian research institute. Dmitri heads the researches begun by his teacher Sintsov who as a result of experiment had received a deadly dose of radiation. Gusev is irradiated also. Doctors warn that any more radiation will kill him. At that time his friend Ilya and Lyolya who loved Dmitri developed a romantic relationship. The enamoured couple prepares for a wedding and look for a possibility to inform Dmitri about it. When they meet, Dmitri already suspects this and coldly received Lyolya and Ilya. Lyolya is caught up in self-contradictions, and as she tries to establish his true feelings for her she learns about the terrible diagnosis. Realising that she still loves Dmitri, Lyolya cancels her wedding to Kulikov and weds Gusev.Read More »

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The film follows the mixed-breed dog Hagen who moves, along with his guardian Lili, in with Lili’s father. Unwilling to pay a harsh “mongrel” fine imposed by the government, Lili’s father abandons him. Determined to find Lili again, Hagen soon attracts a large pack of half-breed followers who start a seemingly organised uprising against their human oppressors.Read More »

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A group of girls and boys in their twenties settle in a country house that seems completely isolated from civilization. One of them writes a novel while the others try to become a gang and prepare a robbery; some fall in love, or seem to be, or believe (or say) they are in love. But these two, three, ten plot lines unfold from what the characters hide or just don’t know, connecting the writing of the novel and the forming of the gang, and the past of two of the characters with that of the house, and of those who perhaps were the two most bitter enemies of nineteenth century Argentine history… With a sense of humor and play that is both the character’s and the film’s, Todos mienten superimposes plot lines as if it were a tapestry from which a part is constantly hidden, revealing it later and changing its meaning, by means of a complot of specialists in pretense that asks the audience to become an accomplice. Brilliant, vital, with an extraordinary depuration and economy of film resources that makes systematic long takes not seem like a prison, but the result of a necessity, Todos mienten is the joy of cinema in its purest form. –BAFICIRead More »

Movie about a friendship of two children – a girl and a boy during the last day of summer holiday

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Young Vika is spending her summer vacation with her grandfather on a remote seaside area surrounded by mountains. She flutters like a butterfly in her dotted dress, both in the mountains and by the water. The girl’s best friends are the mountains, and she loves their echo the most. She considers her affections secrets, and shares them with her new friend, Roma, a young boy who is newcomer to the area and who soon sadly betrays Vika’s friendship. The summer vacation ends on a sour note, but on leaving, Vika throws a coin into the sea, a wish to return next year.Read More »