During the Hungarian war of independence 1848-49 the widow of Kazmer Baradlay – who himself was a supporter of the Austrian Emperor resists the last wish of her late husband wishing his sons to become faithful Hungarians. She asks her eldest Odon to return from St. Petersburg and the others – Richard and Jeno from Vienna. The revolution of 1848 begins. Supported by their mother the sons join the revolutionary cause despite their father’s will.Read More »
Biopic of the life of the jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) who fled Berlin after the Kristallnacht in 1939 to live with her grandparents in the south of France. Salomon had a diary/comic style of painting and drawing and left a biographical body of nearly 1000 works, to which she collectively referred as “Life? or Theater?”. It depicts her youth in Berlin and her romance with a the mysterious Daberlohn against the backdrop of rising national socialism.Read More »
Starring Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright, Cher, Lily Tomlin, Paolo Seganti.
From IMDB:
Semi-autobiographical tale from the early life of director Franco Zeffirelli looks at the illegitimate son (Charlie Lucas as a child, Baird Wallace as the teen) of an Italian businessman. The boy’s mother has died, and he is raised by an Englishwoman (Joan Plowright) in pre-WWII Fascist Italy. Living to each other in Florence, and presided over by an ambassador’s widow (Maggie Smith), a group of Englishwomen live a sheltered existence which they believe is guaranteed personal protection in a tea reception given by Il Duce. However, as war breaks out, the women are interned. Occasionally in this English colony is a wealthy American (Cher), who visits among her travels and marriages to wealthy older men.Read More »
A Soviet soldier, Andrei Sokolov, has been separated with his family by World War II. Suffering in Nazi captivity, he dreams of meeting his darlings after the victory. But cruel fate turned out otherwise.Read More »
Quote:
Marcel Ophuls’ four-and-a-half hour portrait of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand under German occupation from 1940-44 is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as important as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah in its value not just as a film but as an essential historical record in its own right – not least since its interviewees are all long dead.
Describing the fall of France and the rise of the Resistance, with the aid of newly-shot interviews and eye-opening archive footage including newsreels and propaganda films, Ophuls painstakingly crafts a complex, nuanced picture of what really happened in France over this period. He also demolishes numerous self-serving national myths to such an extent that, although he made the film for French television, they wouldn’t show it for over a decade.Read More »
Mona and Manar are two Palestinian girls growing up in refugee camps in Beirut and Bethlehem. Despite the overwhelming barriers that separate them, the girls form a close friendship through letters and a dramatic reunion across the Lebanese border with Palestine. Shot during the liberation of south Lebanon from Israeli occupation and the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, FRONTIERS OF DREAMS AND FEARS articulates the dreams and hopes of a generation of young Palestinians living in exile.Read More »
Emergency Landing is a 1952 Norwegian film directed by Arne Skouen.
It was entered into the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.
An American bomber is shot down on the Norwegian coast during World War II. The airmen bail out and land at different locations. In spite of the German search for them, the Norwegian resistance picks them up and hides them in the attic of the local church, a center of operations. Things become tense, however, when the hideout is spotted by a notorious collaborator, and soon the protagonist, Hans (Henki Kolstad), has to get the airmen to Sweden.Read More »
Plot Synopsis:
It is the summer of 1941 and the Finnish army has been mobilized along the border with Russia. A platoon led by Lt. Eero Perkola is waiting for orders to go on the offensive. The platoon receives orders for a recon mission through the wilderness around the Lieksa lake to search for possible Russian defensive positions. When the platoon rests in a newly conquered village Lt. Perkola meets his fiancee Kaarina Vainikainen, who is serving in the Women’s Auxilary Corps (Lotta). The platoon continues with the mission, but after some time a terrible message reaches Lt. Perkola. The message causes Perkola to become totally indifferent to his and his platoon’s safety during the remainder of the mission.Read More »
Follows a naval officer who stands trial for mutiny after taking command from a ship captain he felt was acting in an unstable way, putting both the ship and its crew in danger.Read More »