Drama

The year is 1909. In the village of Sainte-Philomène de Fortierville, Marie-Anne Caron, wife to Télésphore Gagnon, gives birth to their second daughter, Aurore. The child grows up in a loving and happy family, but in 1918 her mother dies of tuberculosis. Shortly after, Télésphore Gagnon decides to remarry, having fallen under the spell of his beautiful cousin, Marie-Anne Houde. Marie-Anne is not the devoted stepmother everyone takes her to be, however. Following the death of Aurore, a coroner’s inquest reveals that the young girl had died of blood poisoning, brought on by the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepmother. The sensational trial which followed these revelations had a profound and lasting impact on Québec society. Aurore depicts an almost-forgotten period and social milieu of Québec’s history, finally giving voice to those who, at the time, knew what was going on but preferred to remain silent.Read More »

Synopsis by Matthew Tobey
Amid the bloody tumult of Communist dictator Ceausescu in 1989 Romania, a hedonistic and morally sidetracked physician, Daniel Pavenic (Michael Gambon), attempts to hold his annual dinner for 12 of his closest friends. Only three such friends are willing to brave the dangerous war-torn streets to go to Pavenic’s mansion, where they find themselves investigating the shocking, debauched relationship between their host and a once-beautiful house servant. The more the guests learn about the twisted relationship, the more they find themselves re-entangled in their own dark memories. The book upon which this drama is based, The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini, by Stephen Dobyns, was set in Chile.Read More »

Synopsis:
Denny drops fiancée Jean and marries Flora who is worth ten million dollars. When Jean is fired from her job she decides to market the face cream she invented. She goes to Jeffrey and he sends a sample of the product to 12 selected rich women. Only one woman invests in the business and Jean is happy until she learns that it is Flora – but she takes the money. As Denny has no job, the girls give him an office at the factory. The business takes off, but Jean finds that she is still in love with Denny and Denny seems to forget he is married to Flora. So Jean and Flora send him to California for six weeks to open the West Coast branch of Jeanne Varelle. Written by Tony FontanaRead More »

In a rural scenery in the throes of difficult changes lives a humble but promising young farmer girl called Mari Pataki. Her father forbids her from seeing the man she loves. The father, above all preoccupied by work on the fields and prospective wealth, decides to give his daughter in marriage to an old but rich man with whom he does business. Land marries land, he says. This seems to be the unyielding rule of the Hungarian peasantry. But the young lover is ready to stand up to any challenge to keep Maris love.Read More »

In her long-gestating first feature, Adina Pintilie uses bodies of all types to explore the boundaries of intimacy and challenge notions of beauty, which clearly wouldn’t be possible without a significant display of naked flesh. Whether she’s achieved that goal, however, will very much depend on the individual, as “Touch” is a divisive film that aims to address more issues than it can persuasively handle. Seamlessly blending fiction with reality, Pintilie invents a story about an Englishwoman grappling with intimacy issues and weaves in real people guiding her toward being comfortable with her body and the bodies of others.Read More »

The third collaboration between the Swiss director Tanner and the English writer John Berger follows a group of young people in Geneva who are searching for new directions in their lives after the failure of the revolutionary hopes of the 1960s. A former labor activist takes a job as a gardener and handyman with some free-spirited farmers, setting up a school in a greenhouse for the neighborhood kids, while his wife continues to work in a factory. A disillusioned radical turns to gambling, while having interesting conversations with his girlfriend, an adventurous student of Tantrism. A history teacher uses radical methods in the classroom to foster socialist ideas in his students. He hooks up with a grocery store cashier who undercharges poor people and steals food from the store to help her aging friend, a veteran of the Resistance.Read More »

Tale of a self-centered actor preparing to direct his first film, but who is struck down by illness, recalls everything from Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” to Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions” with a friendly ghost thrown in for good measure.Read More »

In the late 1800s, an isolated Egyptian mountain clan sustains itself by exploiting Egypt’s ancient heritage, secretly raiding the tombs of the Pharaohs in Thebes. “One of the greatest Egyptian films ever made, Al-Mummia has an extremely unusual tone – stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of time and the sadness it carries. The carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene – they all work in perfect harmony… This picture has a sense of history like no other, and in the end, the film is strangely, even hauntingly consoling – the final understanding of who and what we are” (Martin Scorsese).Read More »

Quote:
An alien, master of the time from a distant star who travels centuries to centuries, explores our planet. He finds himself on a Brazilian beach with his magic ring.Read More »