Synopsis:
Approaching middle age, the Blakeleys – architect Robert and his brash, overbearing wife Zee – are Londoners who are able to indulge in their collective and individual narcissistic wants because of their financial standing and the fact that they have no children. They have a passionate love/hate relationship based largely on those individual wants. At a party, they meet widowed Stella, a couturier. Robert is immediately attracted to her. Robert and Stella openly embark on an affair, which for Robert is merely the latest dalliance in his life. However, the two fall in love, as, for Robert, Stella fulfills those parts of his life that Zee can’t or won’t since Stella is the antithesis of Zee: understanding with an air of serenity. Zee does whatever she can to disrupt what seems to be the idyllic life that Robert and Stella have set up for themselves, moving from one measure to another as each successive one doesn’t achieve what Zee wants. Through it all, Robert and Zee continue on with their love/hate relationship, one where Stella may merely become a pawn for them to play with, especially as Zee discovers something from Stella’s past.
— Huggo (IMDb).Read More »

Quote:
Completed in 1955, Momma Don’t Allow was the first film by future feature film directors Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, each having come from very different backgrounds. Richardson had risen up the ranks through BBC TV, whereas Reisz was programmer of the NFT (National Film Theatre) and author of The Technique of Film Editing, a standard textbook for several decades, so it’s no surprise Momma Don’t Allow is both an editorial experiment and subtle comment on class behaviour within the Wood Green jazz Club in North London.Read More »

Description from Criterion site:
Satyajit Ray had not planned to make a sequel to Pather Panchali, but after the film’s international success, he decided to continue Apu’s narrative. Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Varanasi (then known as Benares). As Apu progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother. This tenderly expressive, often heart-wrenching film, which won three top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including the Golden Lion, not only extends but also spiritually deepens the tale of Apu.Read More »

Eden is a coming-of-age film about a Protestant Confirmation camp on a summer’s week, set in the archipelago of Helsinki. Aliisa is the intellectually confident non-believer, Jenna is the queen bee and Panu is the scared bird. The experience of these teenagers is affected by Tiina, a young and eager priest.Read More »

Fictional story based on Sarah Bernhard’s visit to Brazil in 1905. The actress, experiencing a personal and professional crisis, is encouraged by her personal Brazilian maid Amélia to perform in Rio de Janeiro. After arriving, she is forced to tolerate the company of Amélia’s exotic sisters.Read More »

The setting is postwar Japan in this standard melodrama from director Yoshishige Yoshida. Shinko (Mariko Okada) is a young teen living in Akitsu when she meets Shusaku (Hiroyuki Nagato). He is a student who comes to Akitsu just before the end of the war to try to regain his health, and Shinko helps take care of him. The couple fall in love, but when they both hear that Japan has surrendered, they attempt suicide together and fail. The two lovers separate as Shusaku leaves town in the aftermath of their failed attempt, then fate tragically intervenes nearly two decades later.Read More »

Synopsis
Winterkind tells a tragic story of the Russian Yelena, who after seven years of captivity learns that her son Boris, born in the camp, has been adopted by a German couple.Read More »

PLOT
Giorgio, an advertiser at a large agency, while on a trip to Nubia to advertise a car brand, meets Maryam and falls madly in love with her. He takes her back to the city where he lives and, fighting against his parents who are opposed to the marriage, marries her.Read More »

Quote:
The movie depicts some episodes of the life of a noble in the Rome of the early XIX century. Loosely based on folklore accounts about the real Onofrio del Grillo (who actually lived in the XVIII century), this character plays a number of pranks, one even involving Pope Pius VII. The movie won two David di Donatello, four Nastri d’Argento in 1982 and a Silver Bear as Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival, still in 1982.Read More »