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Guo Ke follows his multiple-award winning short Thirty Two with the searching and highly moving documentary Twenty Two, which again focuses on the subject of Chinese ‘comfort women’ during World War II.

At the time of filming, only 22 of the 200,000 Chinese victims forced into sexual slavery during World War II remained alive. Through a restrained and careful approach, Twenty Two offers a look at the current situation and lives of these 22 elderly women. Quietly humanistic, the engaging and challenging film follows the subjects as they go about their daily lives, listening to them talk about their experiences and their own perspectives on life, including both suffering and happiness. Read More »

Synopsis:
Seeking shelter from a pounding rainstorm in a remote region of Wales, several travellers are admitted to a gloomy, foreboding mansion belonging to the extremely strange Femm family. Trying to make the best of it, the guests must deal with their sepulchral host, Horace Femm and his obsessive, malevolent sister Rebecca. Things get worse as the brutish manservant Morgan gets drunk, runs amuck and releases the long pent-up brother Saul, a psychotic pyromaniac who gleefully tries to destroy the residence by setting it on fire.Read More »

Synopsis:
Honeymooning in Hungary, Joan and Peter Allison share their train compartment with Dr. Vitus Verdegast, a courtly but tragic man who is returning to the remains of the town he defended before becoming a prisoner of war for fifteen years. When their hotel-bound bus crashes in a mountain storm and Joan is injured, the travellers seek refuge in the home, built fortress-like upon the site of a bloody battlefield, of famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig. There, cat-phobic Verdegast learns his wife’s fate, grieves for his lost daughter, and must play a game of chess for Allison’s life.Read More »

Synopsis
Vappu Kankare – a fiery redhead and priest’s daughter – first competes with, irritates and then admires the ambitious co-habitant, Jalmar “Jali” Kinnu. After the studies, Vappu and Jali get married, but the marriage is disappointing. Not one to be easily put in her place, Vappu takes action.Read More »

Synopsis:
Fender is a lowly clerk in the warehouse of clothing manufacturers Ranting and Co. His one ambition is to have an overcoat of his own. Refused one by the cold hearted Ranting he asks a tailor friend, Morry, to make him one instead, but dies of cold before he can take delivery of it. Unwilling to give up his only desire even in death, he returns as a ghost to persuade Morry to steal him the overcoat he so coveted in life.Read More »

Synopsis
Robert and Elena are twins entangled in a tale of puberty, philosophy and sexuality.

Gröning’s screenplay centers on a brother and sister, Robert and Elena, 19-year-old twins, who spend one summer’s weekend at a petrol station out in the countryside cramming for Elena’s final exam in Philosophy.Read More »

S Y N O P S I S
Marian, a middle aged nurse, devotes herself to her patients like a saint. Sometimes she even takes on the role of a redeemer, by helping the gravely ill to the soothing order of ultimate silence. When she gets linked to a neighbor in an act of common voyeurism, she becomes fascinated by him. Faced with the fragility of these newfound emotions, Marian surrenders to her human needs.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 1909, Emiliano Zapata, a well-born but penniless Mexican Mestizo from the southern state of Morelos, comes to Mexico City to complain that their arable land has been enclosed, leaving them only in the barren hills. His expressed dissatisfaction with the response of the President Diaz puts him in danger, and when he rashly rescues a prisoner from the local militia he becomes an outlaw. Urged on by a strolling intellectual, Fernando, he supports the exiled Don Francisco Madero against Diaz, and becomes the leader of his forces in the South as Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa is in the North. Diaz flees, and Madero takes his place; but he is a puppet president, in the hands of the leader of the army, Huerta, who has him assassinated when he tries to express solidarity for the men who fought for him.Read More »

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Andrzej Wajda’s Krajobraz po bitwie / Landscape After the Battle was a ground-breaking film discussing the personal stories of the inmates of a WW-II camp. The film also draws inspiration from one of Poland’s most iconic paintings.

The screenplay was mainly based on Tadeusz Borowski’s story, Bitwa pod Grunwaldem / The Battle for Grunwald, as well as, to a lesser extent, on a few other stories by the author. The authors of the script were – Andrzej Brzozowski, the co-writer of, among others, Pasażerka by Andrzej Munk and a known film documentarian, as well as Andrzej Wajda.Read More »