1990s

The arrival of a young teacher, Damjan, in a Western Macedonian village disturbs the everyday routine of its multi-confessional residents. He is different from previous village teachers in many aspects. His youth, his life-style and his way with the students rouse the curiosity of the villagers. As a result, he becomes a welcome guest in many a village house. In one of them lives Dzemile, the very first girl he sees in the village and the sister of his newfound friend. He is attracted by the beautiful girl and begins to flirt with her, perhaps carelessly at first, disregarding the deeply patriarchal surrounding. A star-crossed love is born, doomed from the start. Their different religions do not spell a happy ending for the love affair, which is soon out in the open.Read More »

Plot
Chios Island, 1960. Due to the sudden death of the field guard at the village of Tholopotami, the Community Council urgently asks for a replacement from the area’s Agronomist. All the remaining, available field guards refuse to work at that village because of its bad reputation and because of the fact that their co-worker passed away while on duty. But when the Community Council raise up the issue again, offering this time a higher salary to the one who will accept the position, 4 candidates turn up…Read More »

Shortly after his 1970 success with the film Stille Dage i Clichy (Quiet Days in Clichy), director Jens-Jorgen Thorsen started trying to get Jesus Vender Tilbage (The Return) made. For the next twenty years, he kept at it when the money was available but had to cope not only with shortages of money, but an legal ban on the film in his native country of Denmark which was not revoked until 1990. In the face of these obstacles, he has put together a smoothly professional-looking film which seems to be intended to offend the religious sensibilities of a great many people. This satirical drama follows Jesus’ career after he returns to earth to save it from environmental pollution.Read More »

IMDb wrote:
Military doctor General Klenski is arrested in Stalin’s Russia in 1953 during an anti-Semitic political campaign accused of being a participant in so-called “doctors’ plot”.

Quote:
Named after the apocryphal exclamation of Soviet security chief Lavrentiy Beria as he rushed to Stalin’s deathbed, this blackly funny, deliriously immersive satire distils the anticipation and anxiety in the Moscow air, as the Soviet despot lay dying.Read More »

WARNING: This work contains throbbing light. Should not be viewed by individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders.

Synopsis (by Mark McElhatten)
The cast is in flux — the animate and the inanimate get double billed with that dynamic duo — Push and Pull. If matter has consciousness and has renounced movement as Henri Bergson suggests, in order to conserve energy, then here we have a dramatic apostasy. A broken vow of stasis, a flood of energy. What beautiful instability and pulsation in this floating world off a hinge, drawn through invisible bellows, exhaled, exultant. Read More »

Synopsis:
Hiroko Watanabe’s fiancé Itsuki died two years earlier in a mountain climbing accident. While looking through his high school yearbook, Hiroko in a fit of grief decides to write a letter to him using his old school address. Surprisingly she receives a reply, not from the dead Itsuki, but from a woman with the same name whom had known Hiroko’s fiancé in school. A relationship develops between the two women as they continue to exchange letters and share memories of the dead Itsuki.Read More »

Madrid, 1962. More than twenty years after the civil war has finished, a communist comes back to Spain to kill a traitor.Read More »

An ARTE chanell broadcast. Film quality is very good though. This is one of the first films by Assayas, featuring the great Jean Pierre Leaud. Enjoy.

The story: Nineteen-year-old Adrien comes back to his father’s flat to live; the two haven’t seen each other in three years. Clement has a teenage girl living with him who is using heroin. Louise, the girl, at first rejects Adrien, then later falls in love with him. An unstable situation becomes worse as we learn that Adrien is sought by the police for theft.Read More »

The first documentary by Wojciech Staroń. He just finished film school, his wife Małgosia just became a teacher. The year is 1997. They decide to go for a year deep into Siberia: she’ll teach Polish, he’ll shoot a film. And this is that beautiful film, narrated in the first person by Małgosia as she meets all sorts of colorful characters and reflects upon reality with her beautiful, monotone voice, seeing the good in people individually and collectively. This is also about her transformation in this travel undertaken in the centuries-old fashion of the observer who, by observing others, observes herself.Read More »