Quote:
Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cinema studies alienation through mainly minimalist means. Since Clouds of May (Mayis Sikintisi) and Distant (Uzak), which won the Grand Prix and a double prize for Best Actor at Cannes, the most conspicuous trait that makes him an auteur is his personal touch. Emotional distances filled in with long silences and uncertainties on faces in close-ups, supported by beautifully shot landscapes, are his trademarks. With a poetic, yet almost painfully honest approach, he passionately continues depicting the complexity of the human soul and its divine dilemmas. His talent is often comparable to great directors such as Bergman, Antonioni, Bresson, Tarkovsky and he clearly emphasizes the motto “less is more.”Read More »

Bittere Unschuld AKA Bitter Innocence
Andreas Brandt is the head of the research department in a pharmaceutical company. He earns enough to build a future with his wife Monica and his daughter Eva. But a merger puts his position in jeopardy. Brandt randomly observes Larssen, who’s responsible for the merger, raping the waitress Vanessa. Instead of helping her, he takes a file which has previously been stolen by Larssen. It contains incriminating evidence against Larssen. Brandt tries to blackmail Larssen, but Larssen is capable to shift the buck back to Brandt. Slowly Brandt’s family becomes involved…Read More »

Quote:
Sexual revelations emerge when a group of academics and their partners spend a weekend at a country retreat.

Roger Ebert wrote:
Here is a movie where everybody talks about nothing but sex, and the real subject is wit. The movie takes place during a little more than 24 hours in the lives of some friends, who either work in the history department of a Canadian university, or sleep with people who do. They meet for dinner, and as they prepare and eat the food and drink the wine, they talk and talk about sex. But if you listen carefully, you will find that their real subject is not sex, but verbal cleverness, and that their real passion comes in the area of intellectual competition.Read More »

Quote:
One of the powerhouses of the 1950s, Time Without Pity is the first film that Joseph Losey signed with his own name after being blacklisted and fleeing the U.S. In effect, it’s the film in which Losey proclaimed himself a Brit, as eager and willing to skewer the establishment there as he had done on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s the one with Michael Redgrave, in a bravura performance, as the alcoholic father in a race against the clock to save his son, whom we know is innocent, from being executed for murder. The film takes aim at capital punishment.Read More »

Synopsis:
This film, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman’s nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night.Read More »

Synopsis:
The streets of a big city are full of dead bodies but people seem not to notice and pass by indifferently. At the behest of the authorities, the bodies of those citizens who were killed because the rebels should serve as a warning. Antigone wants to bury her brother. A young foreigner who speaks a foreign language and will offer his cooperation. Together, they try to bury the dead, but are discovered and killed. However, the example of the two is followed by other young people who take to the streets to continue to bury the corpses, again defying the authoritiesRead More »

Plot: Joe Pesci is a small man looking for a big break. Owner of a bowling alley and nightclub in Jersey, Ruby Dennis (Pesci) sets his sites on making it big in Vegas. But Ruby finds more than he gambled for and in the end is a much bigger man for it.

Many of the crew members from this film went on from this production to work on John Sayles’ Baby It’s You the following year, including cinematographer ‘Michael Ballhaus’. Sayles’ film was released first in the U.S. while “Dear Mr. Wonderful” premiered in Germany in 1982.Read More »

Synopsis:
Adapted by Nichola Bruce from the acclaimed photographic novel by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke. I Could Read the Sky is a haunting and lyrical film about identity, love, loss, and the isolation and loneliness of the immigrant. Dermot Healy movingly portrays a man reflecting upon his life, from his rural upbringing on the West Coast of Ireland to his journey to London and experiences in the vividly modern metropolis. Driven by a dynamic music soundtrack that draws from both environments, the film is a labyrinthine, visually extraordinary journey into the textures, fragments, details and layers of one man’s life and memories.Read More »

Synopsis:
Westerplatte is a small peninsula at the entry to the Gdansk Harbour. Before World War II, it functioned as a Polish ammunition depot in the Free City of Danzig/Gdansk. Its crew consisted of one infantry company and a group of civilians, 182 people in total. It was the only Polish guard-post at the mouth of the Vistula River, with as little as five sentries, one field cannon, two anti-armour guns and four mortars. It was the first obstacle to Hitler’s predatory march across Europe. The first shots of World War II were fired here. This film tells the story of Westerplatte’s courageous defenders.Read More »