France

Filmed in Parisian parks and on a terrace, LE DIVERTISSEMENT foreshadows the labyrinthine walks that would be a part of Rivette’s cinema, in which the characters look for, follow and find each other like in a romantic scavenger hunt.
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Rivette’s three shorts—Au quartre coins (“The Four Corners,” 1948), Le quadrille (1950), and Le divertissement (“The Diversion,” 1952)—were found in 2009 after the filmmaker and his wife, Véronique, discovered the 16 mm films when going through his materials. Describing them as amateur, made when the filmmaker was barely out of his teens, the trio have been dubbed “apprenticeship films.”(MUBI)Read More »

Inspired by a letter Italian novelist Elsa Morante sent to her friend, LE PUPILLE is a magical fable about a group of mischievous young Catholic schoolgirls during an imaginary wartime. Unfolding over the Christmas holiday, the orphaned girls find themselves blessed with a scrumptious red cake from a generous countess and must evade Mother Superior’s (Alba Rohrwacher) watchful eye for a taste of decadence. Alice Rohrwacher (HAPPY AS LAZZARO, AFI FEST 2018), with her signature whimsical touch, crafts a joyously playful tale about childhood desire, greed and freedom. –Anna LiRead More »

The first film of its kind to offer a comprehensive view of the Jewish settlers in the occupied territories of the West Bank.

An historical overview, a geopolitical study and an intimate look at those people at the core of the most daunting challenges facing Israel and the international community today as the Palestinians and Israelis resume talks again.Read More »

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Here is a lavish and charming film about a decade in the life of the multi-talented eighteenth century playwright and political activist. Under the guiding hand of director Edouard Molinaro, Fabrice Luchini gives a polished, witty, and mesmerizing performance as this French patron saint of freedom. Throughout his turbulent life, Pierre-Augustin Caron Beaumarchais swung back and forth between the pinnacles of success and the ignominy of imprisonment. His classic plays, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, were politically critical of the ruling class and corruption in high places. They both landed him in jail. But the resilient Beaumarchais found a new avenue for his creativity as a secret agent in England. There he got involved with an American who persuaded him to run arms for the American colonies. Beaumarchais, The Scoundrel is a convincing parable about the intoxicating enchantments and the spiritual firepower of freedom.Read More »

In Jean Vigo’s hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and the two climb aboard Jean’s boat, the L’Atalante—otherwise populated by an earthy first mate (Michel Simon) and a multitude of mangy cats—and embark on their new life together. Both a surprisingly erotic idyll and a clear-eyed meditation on love, L’Atalante, Vigo’s only feature-length work, is a film like no other.Read More »

This is 1920: Sophia and Trofim Ivanytch have been living on Vassilievski Island, which is part of Petrograd, for thirteen years. In their house, which looks like a ship wreck, the atmosphere is gloomy. Sophia cannot have children and she is aware that, because of that, she is likely to lose her husband. That is why, when their neighbor dies, she asks Trofim to take in Ganka, his orphaned thirteen-year-old daughter. Trofim agrees and their new life begins…Read More »

Artist Peter Hristoff teaches painting the ay a filmmaker or theater director commandeers his actors, with the class as his playground, his stage. The students surround a field of models in handmade costumes who dance, pause, create emotions, and stage the scenes that Peter invents.Read More »

PLOT: The fantasies and dreams of two over-the-hill actresses are intertwined with their realities, as the two roommates struggle to survive their day-to-day lives in the expensive and difficult world of Paris. In the end, their struggles are eased when the widow of a man they had both been married to gives them a small legacy.Read More »

The filmography of John Ford, most specifically his westerns for which he is arguably best known, is presented, those movies which largely made western stars out of John Wayne and James Stewart as two sides of the hero or antihero as the case may be, but also the majestically beautiful landscape of Monument Valley. The films are discussed as a reflection of him as a man – which is arguably the best representation of him as he was a highly private man who often answered evasively or flippantly in interviews, even about his work – and as a commentary on or his hope for American society. That hope largely was for a better world for the disenfranchised, especially the ethnic minority with Native Americans the usual stand-in as ubiquitous to the genre. Those movies in relation to politics, either his own are that of others who want to capitalize on very specific messages, is also discussed. As an interlude to his Hollywood life, his military service in WWII where he used his filmmaking.Read More »