Drama

It is French Colonial Vietnam in 1929. A young French girl from a family that is having some monetary difficulties is returning to boarding school. She is alone on public transportation when she catches the eye of a wealthy Chinese businessman. He offers her a ride into town in the back of his chauffeured sedan, and sparks fly. Can the torrid affair that ensues between them overcome the class restrictions and social mores of that time? Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Maugerite Duras.Read More »

Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge), first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d’Orsay, tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s first western film. It is based on the classic French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse. Flight of the Red Balloon is one of those movies where nothing much happens. It’s a simple, relatively peaceful film, notable in part because director Hou Hsao-Hsien is shooting outside Asia for the first time. Hou’s starting point–dictated by Paris’s Musee d’Orsay, which commissioned the film–is La Ballon Rouge, the 1956 Albert Lamorisse film about a little boy and his companion in the streets of Paris, a floating red balloon.Read More »

Synopsis :
During the Second World War a writer is crossing the Desna river together with Soviet soldiers. He remembers his happy childhood spent in the same place…Read More »

Selva (13) lives in a coastal town in the Caribbean. After the sudden disappearance of her only motherly figure, she is left to take care of her grandfather who doesn’t want to live. Between shadows and wild games, she must decide if she will help her grandfather die, even though that means going through her last moments of childhood alone.

1 win & 10 nominations.Read More »

Quote:
Director Lee Kwangmo took 10 years to complete Spring in My Hometown, a movie dealing with the Korean War period. The main plot is the life of a boy named Sungmin and his view of adults trying to continue life with what is remains after the Korean War. Rather than dealing with the historic facts of the Korean War itself, this movie depicts the emotions of the post-war generation during that time. Thus, the movie views the historic tragedy in a very contemplative, nostalgic way. The movie’s beautiful images explain why those days that everyone remembers as miserable, were in fact beautiful. Rather than a memory of the Korean War, Spring in My Hometown indirectly reflects the war through the memories of the post-war generation. Other Korean War movies opt to directly show painful experiences and suffering associated with the bloody conflict; in contrast, Spring in My Hometown shows the emotional side of this painful period through the filter of experience that is in the past. In that sense, this movie deals with history yet is not historic because the experience of the Korean War and its aftermath is still an ongoing situation. (Korean Film Archive)Read More »

A fraud investigator falls in love with his suspect, though they may be closer than they think.Read More »

This acclaimed BBC adaptation of Crime and Punishment remains faithful to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel. Set in St Petersburg in the second half of the 19th century, the psychological thriller tells of a desperate young murderer caught in a web of his own guilt. Rodya Raskolnikov is a poverty-stricken student living among the fetid alleyways and crumbling tenements of St Petersburg. Intense and highly intelligent, Raskolnikov believes he is among a class of men destined for greatness and as such is permitted to breach ‘normal’ moral values. He decides to test his courage and integrity by killing a pawnbroker, a mean old woman whom he is sure nobody will miss. The murder, however, only serves to draw Raskolnikov into a nightmare world in which he is dogged by guilt, paranoia and alienation. Faced with the wily investigator Porfiry, who sets up a complex series of traps, encounters and conversations, can Raskolnikov escape his own conscience or the seemingly inevitable punishment?Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
Yoji Yamada’s torchy Japanese drama Love and Honor follows the heartbreaking plight of Shinnojo, a young man employed as a “food taster” for the imperial family. Shinnojo’s position comes to a sudden and tragic end when he consumes poisoned fish intended for the clan leader and is forever robbed of his sight. Forced to give up his job, Shinnojo thus heads home and sinks into a deep and seemingly inescapable depression. Contemplating suicide, Shinnojo is only stopped by the love of his wife, Kayo, who insists that she will also commit seppuku if he proceeds. Begrudgingly, he agrees to relinquish his self-destructive thoughts, but financial problems from his unemployment linger on. With no other recourse, Shinnojo must send Kayo off to the clan bursar to appeal for monetary assistance. Nothing, however, can prepare him for the bursar’s demand for his wife’s body in exchange for monetary help — or for his wife’s sudden complicity in this arrangement. ~ Nathan Southern, RoviRead More »

Synopsis:
A desolate, restless small town lost in the industrial wastelands of Kyrgyzstan. Plagued by boredom, confusion and sex–all the usual agonies of adolescence–17 year-old “Chimp” (so-called because of his ears) and his friends are killing time by fighting, partying, and working in the railyard before undergoing their military service. Chimp has more than his share of problems: his pretty and capricious girlfriend causes him nothing but heartache, his father is a self-loathing chronic alcoholic, and his long-suffering mother has had enough. She leaves, taking Chimp’s kid sister with her.Read More »