María José is 25. Her life moves back and forth between the monotony of class at the university, her eternally distant parents, and a couple of alternative spaces where she can explore her own and others’ limits. One day, she meets Javier, a boy she really likes and tries to have a relationship with, but her behavior starts changing radically. In fact, she’s a few months into her pregnancy and no one knows.

Medea was selected as the Costa Rican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards.Read More »

David Gladwell’s ability to capture both the idyllic and eerie aspects of country life are used to great effect in this filmic adaptation of Martin Armstrong’s poem about an elderly lady who becomes perturbed by something we cant see. It becomes apparent that she is looking for her past, lost in a memory or the clutches of nostalgia. Miss Thompson’s shopping trip to town is in chaotic contrast to the tranquil nature of her lonely home, which on return seems like paradise. This title is also available on the DVD/Blu-ray ‘Requiem for a Village’ in the BFI Flipside collection.Read More »

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On Queensland’s Gold Coast in the early 1980s, when a disgraced former cop, Michael Stacey writes a book exposing police corruption, does an investigation resulting in 2 murders, exposes a religious cult and watches the army begin a military coup.Read More »

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A man named KIM jumps into the dark, quiet waters of the Han River. He wakes up and finds himself lying on strange ground, covered with sand. For a second, he thinks he is in heaven, but soon recognizes that he simply drifted to a nameless island in the river. In one of the riverside apartment buildings, there’s a girl who hasn’t ventured out of her room for years. With her dishevelled hair and in the same old clothes she’s worn for years, she looks just like a castaway. Then one day, she catches sight of a man living alone on an island through her binoculars. Day after day, his lonely but seemingly contented life triggers her curiosity and compels her to step out of her room after so many years. KIM’s extraordinary life becomes the inspiration for change in this girl’s lonely, detached life.Read More »

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BAM/PFA (Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive) wrote:
In this film of the furusato genre, Isako Nakazato returns to the Tsugaru fishing village where she grew up, bringing with her Iwashiro, a gangster who has been marked for a hit. The two decide to start a new life together in the village, learning from the wisdom of the fishermen, the blind musicians and the other villagers who have made them welcome.

Koichi Saito has made several films on similar themes, in which his protagonists are outsiders, often criminals, seeking redemption through love and acceptance into a new community.Read More »

Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Ivan Grozniy) is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia commissioned by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who admired and identified himself with Ivan, to be written and directed by the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Part I was released in 1944 but Part II was not released until 1958, as it was banned on the order of Stalin, who became incensed over the depiction of Ivan therein. Eisenstein had developed the scenario to require a third part to finish the story but, with the banning of Part II, filming of Part III was stopped and what had been completed was destroyed. – wikiRead More »

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Possessed of the same bloody fatalism that pulses through many a Korean crimer, and topped by Kim Yoon-suk’s star-making performance as a lowlife racing to save a woman’s life, “The Chaser” is a grisly serial-killer thriller that develops into a howl of outrage at the ineptitude of the system. Drawing both white-knuckle tension and moral anguish from a maddening succession of red herrings and wrong turns, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (Chugyeogja) “tells the story of a detective turned pimp who finds himself in trouble when several of his girls disappear without paying him.” The film was released in its native South Korea in February and was a good-sized hit.Read More »

Mai Zetterling explores Swedish cultural canon in a Canadian TV-production called “Cities”. Zetterling herself play all the prominent roles.Read More »

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A traveller in China’s far west in 1975 crosses paths with a young girl. They both have an interest in a film that is being screened in the area, but for different reasons.

Scott Mariner wrote:
Censors in Beijing have approved the release for November 27, following a year-long effort to rework the film to please the government. One Second was originally intended to premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019. However it was pulled at the last minute with producers claiming “technical issues” — a common euphemism for Chinese government censorship. The incident was a shock to the international film community and indicated that the propaganda department’s recent takeover of the Chinese film industry means the government will be taking a much more heavy handed role in dictating what artists can and cannot create.Read More »