Drama

Eric Bishop, a middle-aged postman working for the Manchester sorting office, is going through a dreadful crisis. For starters, his second life companion has not resurfaced although she was released from prison a few months ago. He is left alone with two stepsons to look after, which is no bed of roses since the two teens disrespect him and keep disobeying him. To make matters worse, Ryan, the older boy, fascinated by Zac, a dangerous gangster, has accepted to hide his gun in Eric’s house. On the other hand, he is asked by Sam, his student daughter who has a newborn baby,to get back in touch with Lily, his separated wife. Now, Eric left her not long after she gave back to their daughter. As a result Eric panics… Having lost all his bearings, Eric Bishop soliloquizes face to the poster of his idol, another Eric, French footballer Eric Cantona, when the latter appears just like the genie out of Aladdin’s lamp. Through a series of aphorisms peculiar to him, the footballer-philosopher will help remorse-ridden desperate Eric Bishop to get by.Read More »

This classic motion picture from Argentina is a 1963 art-house adaptation of a short story by the renowned Argentine writer, Julio Cortázar. The short story of the same name appears in his 1951 collection, Bestiario.
In Greek mythology and the Odyssey, Circe is a beautiful and powerful enchantress who uses her gifts to lure men into her lair to then turn them into animals. The “Circe” of this feature film is Delia, a beautiful but mysterious woman whose two previous suitors died unexpectedly while courting her, one of a heart condition and the other of suicide. Despite neighborhood rumors that implicate Delia as the cause of these tragedies, Mario finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.Read More »

Ex-con Kermek and his beloved Eva want to leave their crime-infested lives on the Kazakh steppes behind. He has a dream: building a movie theater in the mountains.Read More »

Synopsis:
David is an accountant. He leaves town every Friday, pretending he is going to take care of his parents at their old people’s home. But actually his parents are dead, and he spends the week-ends converting a chalet. He intends to live there with Lise, a woman he knows and loves since childhood. But Lise has just married another and has a baby. David’s mad love does not see those facts as an obstacle…Read More »

“Bis daß der Tod euch scheidet” is the story of a couple whose mad love for each other smashes headlong into the husband’s patriarchal value system. Based on a true story.Read More »

Gi Ju-bong (Right Now Wrong Then) plays a taciturn, lonely widower with a secret or two. Mo Geum-san’s provincial life seems orderly and governed by routine: undemanding days in his small barber-shop, daily visits to the local swimming pool for his fitness, a drink and a snack on the way home and nights spent wrestling with a pillow that’s too lumpy. Mr Mo’s first secret is that he’s semi-estranged from his son, a student in Seoul; some bad news from a doctor makes him want to reconnect. His second secret is that beneath his placid and slightly dour exterior, a Chaplin-esque slapstick comedian is struggling to get out.Read More »

A middle-aged couple visit a temple, where they had spent their first night together thirty years previously. On their way back, the woman realises she has likely left her phone there and insists on recovering it. This begins the winter’s night, one plunged in the shared, or separate, past of what forms the heart of a couple. At the beginning of the film, the subject’s triviality is conveyed by a rather naturalistic treatment, but this only serves to subsequently produce a stronger twist and gently shift the film towards a starker viewpoint that reveals the underpinnings of love’s discourse, and its memory. The subtle undramatic acting intentionally clouds the rules of the sentimental game, never far from breaking the ice. Bodies, emotions and memories, outside the traditional patterns of attraction and repulsion, are now on an equal footing on the threshold of this winter temple-turned-stage.Read More »

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Based on a theatrical text by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912), who was a bitter and funny witness of the turn-of-the-20th-century Romanian bourgeois mores, Carnival Scenes manages to preserve and further enhance the slightly hysteric atmosphere of his plays. Pintilie creates a strange combination of carnival scenes which is brought to the screen as a burlesque, fast-paced, screwball comedy with a meditative undertone. This film was banned in Romania for a decade until the death of Ceausescu in 1989 and was only released after the 1989 revolution.Read More »

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8 1/2 weaves fluidly through the visually intoxicating landscape of Federico Fellini’s subconscious, seemingly to seek inspiration and validation for his life and work. In an opening scene that symbolizes much of Fellini’s films, a suffocating man, trapped inside his car, inexplicably begins to float into the skies, only to be abruptly tugged back to the ground. But it is also an indelible image that shatters any preconceived illusion of “typical” elements in a Fellini film. The film, 8 1/2, literally marks Fellini’s work on 8 1/2 feature films (the “1/2” derived from collaborative direction films), and proves to be a transitional film in his artistic career.Read More »