Kukolka” tells the story of a young Russian gymnastics star who is forced to return to the life of an ordinary teenage girl after an injury prevents her from competing. As the film unfolds, the audience is drawn into the damaged psyche of the girl and the world that shaped her. The story is dark, intense, and ultimately disquieting; it draws you in, horrifies you, and keeps you thinking long after the superb finale. A film that is difficult to forget.Read More »
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A retelling of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as a surreal story of universal suffering, the film emphasizes the heroine’s internal transformation as she slowly loses her grip on reality. Her erotic fascination with rich clothing and her almost childish desire to seduce and to be lost in passion is brilliantly contrasted with the small-town life that leaves Emma tragically isolated in her passionate attempt to bridge the gap between spirituality and sensuality.Read More »
The unborn child of Mamlakat (Khamatova) is telling her story. She is 17, beautiful and vivacious, and dreaming secretly of becoming an actress. She lives with her father and brother (Bleibtreu) in a small village in Central Asia. One night she is seduced by an actor from a traveling troupe, who poses as a friend of Tom Cruise, and makes her pregnant. She tries to abort, but her father and brother become determined to find the seducer, setting in motion a cascade of comic adventures.Read More »
A young married couple in today’s Moscow: He’s an unemployed guy who gets some money by giving rides to strangers at nights (the illegal taxi driving so common in Russia). She’s a young graphic designer who just got her first job. The film tracks their unstable relationship throughout a year. Both have different backgrounds and pursue different goals in life, and gradually the differences, no matter how insignificant, become fatally important for their relationship.
Oxana Bychkova makes a poignant portrait of a young, immature love and subtly shows how feelings inevitably become routine, against the will of the lovers. This unsentimental and touching drama unfolds gradually but its pace is engaging and has genuine tension.Read More »
The lengthy siege of Leningrad during World War II cost a million civilian lives. In Alexander Sokurov’s documentary, various people – actors, journalists, students, soldiers – read eyewitness accounts about this ‘historic and cultural disaster’, to use Sokurovr’s words.Read More »
10 Days in North Korea takes the audience on a trip around Pyongyang, the focal point of power for the North Korean regime, to speak with citizens of what the filmmakers consider a very interesting “social experiment” that has been going on for about seventy years.
The film kicks off by demonstrating the allegiance of the Pyongyang workforce – interviews with an accomplished biologist and a few factory workers convey a genuine high opinion of “Grand Marshal” Kim Jong-un and enthusiasm towards contributing to the regime’s collective productivity. The terminology used to describe the government’s control over their daily lives is they are being “protected.”Read More »
In a Russian coastal town, Nikolai is forced to fight the corrupt mayor when he is told that his house will be demolished. He recruits his old Army friend to help, but the man’s arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family.Read More »
Synopsis:
The Fool is a movie about a simple plumber. He is an honest man that is up against an entire system of corrupt bureaucrats. The lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dormitory that is at risk of collapsing during the night are at stake.Read More »
Synopsis
A story about a chance encounter that momentarily destroyed a successful and happy family life. All of a sudden the woman found passion and desire more important than her loving husband and cherished child. The father and son suffer from the realization that they are no longer needed, but try to understand and forgive. The woman, who failed to become happy, is in turmoil.Read More »