Drama

SYNOPSIS:
Expatriate Henry Miller indulges in a variety of sexual escapades while struggling to establish himself as a serious writer in Paris.
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Herbert Ross directed this adaptation of Woody Allen’s hit Broadway play concerning a shy film critic who has trouble with women. Woody Allen plays Allan Felix, a writer for Film Quarterly consumed by movies, particularly his favorite film of all time, Casablanca. At the start of the film, Allan’s wife Nancy (Susan Anspach) has just left him and is applying for a divorce. Unable to deal with this emotional turmoil, Allan seeks solace in the movies he loves, imagining Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) has dropped by his apartment to offer Allan advice on dealing with the ladies (“Dames are simple. I never met one that didn’t understand a slap in the mouth or a slug from a forty-five”).Read More »

The first film of Tizuka Yamasaki, a young Brazilian woman of Japanese ancestry, Gaijin: Roads to Freedom is based on the experiences of Yamasaki’s own grandmother in coming to Brazil in the wave of immigration at the turn of the century, when Japanese were encouraged to join the Brazilian labor force during that country’s coffee boom. In an effort to comply with the immigration agents’ preference for family units, a very young Titoe marries Yamada, a man whom she has never met, and the two leave for Brazil. Life on the plantation is close to slavery: workers, forced to buy food at the plantation store, are presented with falsified accounts, and at the end of the year are still in debt to the plantation. The film treats relations between Brazilian plantation owners and foremen and their Japanese laborers (a group which, traditionally, did not cause labor problems), as well as relations between the Japanese and other immigrant groups, in particular the Italians. A compelling story of a woman’s struggle to survive, spanning many years, is juxtaposed with the growing union consciousness among immigrant workers in Brazil. Read More »

One of the most exciting films of 2009: Amit Duttas first feature is based on three short stories by Vinod Kumar Shukla and Saadat Hasan Manto. Maybe it indeed is about the problems of masculinity in the modern world (the director says so, at least), but there’s so much more to find in these images. There isn’t one conventional moment in the film. Dutta, one of the most idiosyncratic directors working today, makes every single shot completely his own.Read More »

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This utterly compelling psychological thriller from Michael Haneke – one of cinema’s most daring, original and controversial directors – stars Daniel Auteuil as Georges, a TV presenter who begins to receive mysterious and alarming packages containing covertly filmed videos of himself and his family. To the mounting consternation of Georges and his wife (Juliette Binoche), the footage on the tapes – which arrive wrapped in drawings of disturbingly violent images – becomes increasingly personal, and sinister anonymous phone calls are made. Convinced he knows the identity of the person responsible, Georges embarks on a rash and impulsive course of action that throws up some unpleasant facts about his past and leads to shockingly unexpected consequences.Read More »

A group of young Londoners struggle to find meaning in their lives while masking their discontent with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.Read More »

Plot synopsis from AMG:

Shot on-location on the streets of Bombay, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay is the gritty tale of Krishna (Shafiq Syed, a runaway discovered by Nair), a boy kicked out of his home, and abandoned by the traveling circus he had joined. In desperation, he uses the little money he has to buy a one-way ticket to the nearest city, which turns out to be Bombay. “Come back a movie star,” the ticket agent tells him mockingly. In Bombay, Krishna joins a small community of street kids, and gets a job delivering tea. Soon, everyone in the downtrodden neighborhood knows him as “Chaipau” (tea boy). Krishna wants to save five hundred rupees, enough money to get back into his mother’s good graces and return home. Chillum (Raghubir Yadav), a streetwise young man who deals drugs for the local kingpin, Baba (Nana Patekar), takes Krishna under his wing. The sly but cruel Baba has a mistress, Rekha (Aneeta Kanwar), who works as a prostitute. She has a young daughter, Manju (Hansa Vithal), who has a crush on Krishna, but Krishna only has eyes for the girl they call “Sweet Sixteen,” a virginal teenager who is being forced into prostitution. Eventually, Baba fires the surly Chillum, and Krishna finds himself struggling to keep Chillum alive by supporting his drug habit. Many of the roles in the film are played by non-actors, including the street kids, and an actual madame who allowed Nair to film scenes in her brothel. The Harvard-educated Nair began her filmmaking career working on documentaries. Salaam Bombay, her narrative feature debut, won worldwide critical acclaim, and was awarded the Camera D’Or at Cannes.
— Josh RalskeRead More »

Casanova hires a new servant to witness the last moments of his life. Leaving a gallant and libertine Swiss castle, he decides to spend his remaining days in the poor and dark lands of eastern Europe. There, his society life and rationality begin to collapse under a romantic and violent force, represented by Dracula and his eternal power.

Golden Leopard at Locarno 2013
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Bekir is in love with Uğur, Uğur is in love with Zagor… Like so many other love stories, this is a simple one-liner. It begins one day in a shop when a man is swept off his feet by a woman. In the course of time, Uğur comes to mean life itself for Bekir. Uğur always comes into the room when Bekir is asleep. For Bekir, sleep and life are akin to an angel or devil, defining on which side of the borderline he stands between sanity and insanity. From that moment on, Bekir finds Uğur beside him whenever he wakes up – which most of the time is in a different town. With Uğur’s presence, Bekir finds life freed of all its absurdity and given instead a single meaning: Uğur. As far as Bekir is concerned, there is no need now to look for any further meaning. His sole form of existence is being with Uğur; it no longer matters which town he is in, which streets he roams, at which tavern he drinks…Read More »