• Nadine Labaki – Et maintenant on va où? AKA Where Do We Go Now? (2011)

    Drama2011-2020ComedyLebanonNadine Labaki

    In an isolated Lebanese village, the mosque and the church stand side by side–but religious tension threatens to boil over, particularly as a series of pranks escalates into ever-increasing hostility. The women of the village, both Christian and Muslim, concoct improbable schemes to defuse the tension, including hiring a troupe of Ukrainian belly dancers. Where Do We Go Now? veers back and forth between wrenching drama and cheerful comedy but somehow maintains a balance. Director-actress Nadine Labaki leads her mostly nonprofessional cast with heart and fervor.Read More »

  • Narciso Ibáñez Serrador – Películas para no dormir: La culpa AKA Blame (2006)

    2001-2010HorrorNarciso Ibáñez SerradorSpain

    Quote:
    When the single mother nurse Gloria has financial difficulties, her colleague and friend Dr. Ana Torres invites her to move with her six year-old daughter Vicky to her old big house where she runs a gynecologic clinic. In return, Gloria would assist Ana in her clinic in the afternoons. Sooner Gloria finds that Ana dedicates to abortion in her clinic, and also that she is lesbian and has a crush on her. When Ana gets pregnant of her lover Javier, Ana proposes an abortion, and after more than three months, the reluctant Gloria accepts her offer with tragic consequences.Read More »

  • Ebrahim Golestan – Asrar ganj dareheye jenni AKA The ghost valley’s treasure mysteries (1974)

    1971-1980ArthouseComedyEbrahim GolestanIran

    Quote:
    The Ghost Valley’s Treasure Mysteries (in Persian: اسرار گنج دره جنی, transliterated as Asrar-e Ganj-e Darre-ye Jenni), also known as “The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jinn Valley”, is a 1974 satirical comedy Iranian film, directed by Ebrahim Golestan. It was released by Golestan Films, and was Golestan’s last feature film in Iran. Using symbolic language, the director was accused of having the Shah’s support.

    Very bad quality, but apparently the only way to see this movie by Ebrahim Golestan.Read More »

  • Tai Katô – Edogawa Rampo no injû AKA Beast in the Shadows (1977)

    1991-2000AsianJapanMysteryTai Katô

    Multiple murders, red herrings and sadomasochistic sex are the order of the day in this ground-breaking mystery from Edogawa Rampo, Japan’s foremost writer of suspense novels. The year is 1930 and the chance meeting of a novelist and one of his fans
    opens the door to a series of mysterious events culminating in the death of a wealthy industrialist who may have been leading a double life. Aoi Teruhiko and Kayama Yoshiko star along with two of Japan’s most famous and highly respected actors, Otomo Ryutaro and Wakayama Tomisaburo. In a departure from the samurai genre in which he made his name this is director Kato Tai’s masterpiece. A true work of cinema art comes to life in this deadly tale of love and betrayal!Read More »

  • Jacques Tourneur – The Fearmakers (1958)

    USA1951-1960ClassicsJacques TourneurThriller

    In this drama, a Korean war veteran, a victim of brainwashing while he was a POW, finally goes back to his home in Washington, DC, where he resumes his job at a public relations-opinion research firm. He soon discovers that his company is being run by communists after his partner mysteriously died. Now pro-communist propaganda seems to be their primary business. To stop them, the vet begins cooperating in a full-scale Senate investigation.Read More »

  • Karpo Acimovic-Godina – Umetni raj AKA Artificial Paradise (1990)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaKarpo Acimovic-GodinaYugoslavia

    Los Angeles in 1935. Fritz Lang receives in his hotel apartment the young film amateur Willy, who wants to prepare an interview with him. At a certain moment Lang starts relating how, as an army officer in the First World War, he spent some time in the house of the lawyer Karol Gatnik in a small town in the northeast of Slovenia.Read More »

  • Sarah Polley – Take This Waltz (2011)

    2011-2020CanadaComedySarah Polley

    Polley’s Take This Waltz is a follow-up to her critically successful film Away from Her. The movie is about a love-triangle concerning a woman who realizes that she may be addicted to the honeymoon phase of her relationships. The problem? She’s been married for five years. She meets a man named Seth on a business trip and finds out that Seth lives in the same neighborhood. Fancy that! A little flirting leads to a little something else, and suddenly, you’ve got yourself a full-blown life crisis on your handsRead More »

  • Vladimir Kobrin – Seroe Vremya AKA Gloomy Time (1994)

    1991-2000ArthouseExperimentalRussiaVladimir Kobrin

    The film is about the crisis in the Russian cinema, which occurred 100 years after the birth of cinema.
    The title of the film reflected Kobrin’s feelings of this period, the collapse of the old order, pennilessness and uncertainty about the future.
    In some respects, the film almost documents the life of the Kobrins House, a whole studio compressed within a small flat, children, computers, people working on computers, kitchen, guests, Kobrin himself – all this is filmed in the time-lapse mode.
    The film is narrated by snippets from Vasily Nalimov’s “Spontaneity of consciousness”, intermixed with stories told by a rustic man.Read More »

  • Eduardo de Gregorio – La mémoire courte AKA Short Memory (1979)

    1971-1980Eduardo de GregorioFrancePoliticsThriller

    In this thriller, a UNESCO translator stumbles across a group which is hiding and supporting Nazis and facilitating their travel around the world. She had been given an assignment to study the work of a writer who recently had died, and the conspiracy is revealed in materials he left behind. She comes upon a young man who is going through the writer’s papers, and she immediately assumes he must be one of the conspirators. However, he soon convinces her of his innocence in that regard, and the two together begin a search for the ringleader.Read More »

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