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A young woman’s wedding becomes a ritual of mourning when her sister and family die in an auto accident on the way to the wedding. The sisters’ mother refuses to accept her daughter’s death, and in the midst of wedding guests and mourners, including the drivers of the truck that caused the accident, she orders the wedding to take place. But how can the daughter marry in the midst of a wake and without the family’s traditional mirror, which the sister was bringing to the service? The film is transcendental in its resolution.Read More »

In this deeply affecting portrait of ordinary courage in present-day South Africa, a single mother—Shirley Adams—struggles to care for her paraplegic teenage son, Donovan, in a depressed district on the outskirts of Cape Town. Wearied but resolute, she desperately clings to him as he withdraws from the world following a suicide attempt, and is hopeful when his spirits are momentarily lifted by the appearance of Tamsin, a pretty but overeager social worker. But when the relationship between Donovan and Tamsin sours, his fragile emotional health declines, and Shirley’s faith and perseverance are put to the ultimate test. First-time director Oliver Hermanus’s observant camera holds close to its subjects, capturing the claustrophobia, intimacy and hushed anguish surrounding the tender daily routines of a mother and her child.Read More »

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Ostensibly framed as a postwar melodrama that loosely evokes Leo McCarey’s Love Affair in its story of a shipboard encounter between two emotionally unavailable people, Joseph Morder’s L’Arbre mort is also a tone piece that seeks to reconcile the space between love and death, history and memory, documentary and fiction. This duality is suggested in the diffused opening image of Jaime (Philippe Fano) abstractedly looking out into the open waters from the deck of a ship that plays out against an asynchronous, voiceover narration describing his long-awaited return to South America after completing his medical studies in Europe.Read More »

The traditional and modest life in deep rural Crete. A film on the verge of traditional documentary film and an attempt to find a new direction in terms of what documentary film could be. An envious look at contemporary works by his fellow filmmakers from the British Free Cinema, obviously spurred on director Pitt Koch’s ambition.Read More »

Director Tanada Yuki offers a frank depiction of sexuality at 17 in her brilliant adaptation of Saso Akira’s coming-of-age manga. Charging forward with all the stagnant urgency and high-strung awkwardness of adolescence, “Ain’t No Tomorrows” weaves three episodes of high school angst and sexual awakening. Sex-obsessed virgin Hiruma (Emoto Tokio, Your Friends) desperately pursues a sickly classmate (Miwako). His buddy Mine (Endo Yuya, Nodame Cantabile) becomes the unlikely savior for a naive schoolgirl (Ando Sakura, Love Exposure), and chubby Ando (Kusano Ini) unexpectedly scores with the class beauty (Misaki Ayame, Ghost Friends).Read More »

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Can witnesses a murder in a small town. The police don’t allow him to leave after his testimony. On the other hand, a quarantine is declared due to rabid dogs. The whole town turns into purgatory with no exit is almost at the edge of insanity.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Clara Stuart, star of music hall and cinema, arrives in Paris, to great public acclaim. She has everything – fame, wealth, and – through her aristocratic husband – a title. Hence, whilst she is worshipped by the masses, she is the object of hatred for Philippe Lutcher, am impoverished artist and notable anarchist. Lutcher shoots Clara Stuart after she gives a public recital, but he cannot bring himself to kill her. At his subsequent trial, the star attempts to plead in her assailant’s favour, but Lutcher rejects her support…’
– Films deFranceRead More »

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***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

Three years before Andrei Tarkovsky made his first feature film Ivanovo Detstvo (1962) and became one of the most extraordinary directors of all time, war veteran Grigori Chukhrai wrote and directed a memorable and considerably beloved anti-war statement called Ballada o Soldate. This beautiful cinematographic achievement was basically one of the first films that accurately portrayed the human side of people that were involved in the war and the cataclysmic aftermath caused in an environment surrounded by hopelessness and chaos.Read More »

A confirmed bachelor is in for the surprise of his life when a get-rich-quick scheme backfires and leaves him with a pint-sized new roommate.Read More »