2000s

A poignant and moving urban drama, focusing on the growing problem of sexual assault in Mexico City. Director Sistach fictionalizes the true story of a friendship between two adolescent girls which is torn apart when one of them is brutally raped. Rebellious tomboy Yessica is frequently in trouble at school and at home, with its lower middle-class limitations. She is always at odds with her mother, bullying stepfather, and despicable stepbrother, Jorge. Then Jorge strikes a deal with a friend, helping the man trap Yessica and rape her, in exchange for money. Terrified and ashamed of the attack, Yessica remains silent, seeking comfort in her friendship with innocent and childlike Miriam, from a more stable home, though reared by a poor single mother. Tragedy unfolds as Yessica increasingly relies on Miriam and begins to get the naive girl into trouble, until Miriam finds she is no longer in control of her fate.Read More »

Quote:
Malek is a reclusive topographer who accepts a commission to survey a remote part of western Algeria in order to extend the electrical grid. He arrives to find the area has been decimated by religious fundamentalists who have only recently cleared out. Malek meets the local police, the shepherds who are beginning to return, and villagers who invite him to a makeshift party. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by the sound of explosions. Not to worry, explains a local man. When the cicadas land in the sand, it’s enough to trigger off the buried booby-traps. But as Malek soon realizes, it isn’t cicadas setting off the mines, but refugees trying to reach the coast and a boat for Spain. The next day he finds a young woman, exhausted and terrified, hiding in a corner of his shack. Malek decides to drive her to the border, and together they set out toward some indeterminate vanishing point on the horizon. These present-day realities are interspersed with flashbacks to the idealistic political debates of his youth, and set against a soundtrack that mixes alternative rock, Nigerian Afrobeat, and Algerian Rai.Read More »

Insurance salesman tries to get money from his hippie cousin by fulfilling his dream: Arraigning for John Lennon and Janis Joplin’s “second coming”.Read More »

Europa 2005 – 27 octobre

Shot in Clichy Sous Bois, cauldron of the suburban riots that burned the winter of 2005, and composed of two panoramic shots of the substantion where Bouna and Zyed were killed whilst being pursued by the police. There is no voiceover and only one title to be translated for entire duration of this short: :Chambre a Gaz, Chaise Electrique” or “Gas Chamber, Electric Chair”. These shots and movements are repeated five times.Read More »

From the Midnight Eye review by Tom Mes:

“Miyoko is as much a biopic of Shinichi Abe as it is an adaptation of his manga. Inevitably so, since the manga was, if the film is to believed, thoroughly autobiographical, describing the daily lives and romantic entanglements of Abe and his sensual wife Miyoko. Slaving away without much success at first, Abe hits the mother lode when he decides to make Miyoko not just the model for his heroines, but the heroine period. But after the first volume is published, complications ensue. The couple’s most private details are there in the pages of the magazine for all to see and follow.”Read More »

Police Beat is a highly unconventional crime film in which the protagonist Z is so preoccupied with his possibly unfaithful girlfriend that he never once acknowledges criminal world that swirls around him. The crimes Z encounters become mirrors of the his turbulent inner state, allowing him to philosophize about his unstable romantic relationship as well as his own development as an emotional being. While Z’s regular interactions are in English, his thoughts ­ the film’s narration ­ are in his native Wolof, the primary language of West Africa. In this way, Police Beat is an unusual portrait of an immigrant new to the United States that focuses less on the protagonist’s socio-economic difficulties than on his emotional responses to American life.Read More »

IMDB:
Balans ve Manevra is a great movie about a group of people living in one of the most beautiful Aegian coast towns who, despite the serenity and the beauty of the place, just can’t seem to find the “balance” that they all so desperately need in their lives no matter what “maneuver” they make. The low ratings and bad reviews are mainly due to the fact that this is not a movie that appeals to the common audience. It has a slow pace that focuses on character development instead of the story, because the characters are the story in the film and the performances across the board are simply amazing. Read More »

A man has to deal with a handful of crises — some of his own making — in this drama from Croatian writer and director Zrinko Ogresta. Nikolai (Leon Lucev) is an architect whose life is taking a turn for the worse on several levels at once. One of Nikolai’s business partners is attempting to frame him for some serious white-collar crime, his young daughter is demanding more time from him than he’s able to give, his wife Maya (Jandranka Dokic) makes it painfully obvious that she had no respect for him anymore, and his mistress Anna (Daria Lorenci) is growing tired of being the other woman. Anna is also one of Nikolai’s co-workers, which causes problems both at the office and at home, and when both Maya and Anna give him his walking papers, his life goes into a tailspin. Iza Stakla (aka Behind The Glass was an official selection at the 2008 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.Read More »

Synopsis
Wang runs a little noodle shop in a small desert town near Jiayu Pass not far from the Great Wall. He lives in his shop with his wife and their staff. But life with Wang is far from pleasant: he’s a real skinflint who only thinks about himself, and he sometimes doesn’t pay his staff for months on end. His wife also suffers at the hands of this domestic tyrant, although a discrete affair with Li, the shy cook, helps her to bear her lot in life. Every time she needs some more rouge, Li drives his boss lady into town where they have sex. But their regular little tryst doesn’t go unnoticed. Shortly beforehand, Li’s lover purchases a gun from a Persian carpet salesman and gives it to the cook for safekeeping. Wang, she says, must die – it’s the only way they can be happy. In the meantime, a waiter named Zhao and a policeman named Zhang inform Wang about his wife’s love affair and the gun that Li keeps hidden.Read More »