2000s

Vincent Ward weaves drama with documentary to unravel the extraordinary story of Puhi, the Tuhoe woman who welcomed the young filmmaker into her home in 1978. Ward made the observational film In Spring One Plants Alone about Puhi’s day-to-day life in the remote Urewera Ranges. By then almost 80, she was obsessively caring for her schizophrenic adult son Niki, whose violent fits terrified her. In this new cinema feature Ward sets out to unravel the mystery that has haunted him for 30 years: Who was Puhi?

And why was she so obsessed with this last remaining son?Read More »

Quote:
Christmas Eve is a hot and suffocating night in Argentina. A Mitzvah entertainer, a novelist, his girlfriend, a doctor, a wheelchair bound man, a father out looking for a last-minute present – all are tied together without necessarily knowing it, both by circumstances that bring their lives to intersection, but more so by longing.
An acid vision about Christmas.Read More »

Synopsis:
The film tells the story in a non-linear fashion, with two timelines being depicted simultaneously. Rahul Bose has a dysfunctional marriage with Sameera Reddy who has an extra-marital affair. Rahul tries to reconnect with his long-lost father (played by Mithun Chakraborty), while Sameera dreams of breaking free of her stifling domestic life. Rahul is considered as a failure both in professional and personal lives. However, an honest and simple man, he clings to simple joys of life and memories of his childhood. The back-and-forth movement of the story between two timelines (the present day and Rahul’s childhood) and the arrangement of the sequences make Mithun a mystery man—he could be dead, alive, or, just a figment of Rahul’s imagination.Read More »

Synopsis:
Sofia, (Rosa Maria Sarda from All About My Mother), a renowned pianist, is long separated from the daughters’ father. It is on the occasion of her birthday that she delivers a stunning announcement: she has fallen in love again.

Clearly smitten, she begins to describe her new lover: somewhat younger…also a pianist. The daughters, thrilled and eager to hear more, are interrupted by the doorbell. A woman walks in.Read More »

Schaub and Schindelm’s documentary follows two Swiss star architects on two very different projects: the national stadium for the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008 and a city area in the provincial town of Jinhua, China. Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are literally building bridges between two cultures, two architectural traditions, and two political systems. Their work doesn’t simply enhance China’s great international debut, but serves the everyday needs of the Chinese population. “Bird’s Nest” presents the Basle architects as they find solutions not in the comfort of an ivory tower but in encounters and friction on the ground.Read More »

Inspired by Jacques Mesrine’s autobiographical book “L’Instinct de mort” – which he wrote in prison shortly before his magnificent final escape – Jean-François Richet’s fast-paced drama charts Mesrine’s rise from a wayward French soldier in Algeria to a bolder and bolder criminal on the streets of Paris. Mesrine’s outlaw odyssey even brought him to Canada, where he fell in with separatist radicals in Quebec. Thirty years after French police gunned him down in a spectacular shootout, his infamy lives on. Equal parts thriller and biopic, Mesrine remains faithful to its central character, a dynamic figure who is by no means a model protagonist.Read More »

The story of Jacques Mesrine, France’s public enemy No. 1 during the 1970s. An evocation of the his life, which traces the colorful career of this gangster called “the man with the hundred faces”. After nearly two decades of legendary criminal feats – from multiple bank robberies and to prison breaks – Mesrine was gunned down by the French police in Paris. The second episode of the Mesrine legend.Read More »

Konets Veka is another Konstantin Lopushansky fantasy parable with the elements of a mystic thriller. The story takes place in Moscow in the autumn of 1993, during a strike; the army is assaulting the parliament, and Marina Nikolayevna and her daughter Olga have found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. Six years later, Olga feels sorry for her mother and decides to invite her to Germany to have her treated at a mental hospital by a perverted doctor who promises to cure her. Olga’s mother, however, cannot shake the memory of her husband, who died in 1993 during the strike in Moscow.Read More »

Wishman’s plot rotates around the maneuverings of a whore who longs for a touch of mink and a seat at the finer tables in life. Blackmail, betrayal, murder and malice are all part of her tender trade. Lord help anyone who lays in her way.Read More »