Musta jää (Black Ice) has won the Jussi for Best Film of 2007. The film directed and written by Petri Kotwica managed to collect six of the 15 ‘Finnish Oscars’. The prestigious awards were presented in Helsinki during the traditional annual Jussi gala on Sunday night.Read More »
This short movie came out of the alternative takes of a scene of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s previous film, Gente da Sicília (1999) and consists of a dialogue between an old woman and a man.Read More »
This short movie came out of the alternative takes of a scene of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s previous film, Gente da Sicília (1999) and consists of a dialogue between a grinder and a foreigner.Read More »
Delia, a young Romanian girl, comes to Bucharest with her parents to collect a prize she has won in a contest organized by a soft-drinks company. The prize is a beautiful new car. All Delia has to do now is appear in front of the camera in a commercial. All goes well until it becomes clear that Delia and her parents have very different ideas about what to do with the new car. Meanwhile, the contest’s sponsor needs a radiant prize-winner with a gleaming smile. A wicked satire and a psychological portrait of a society perverted by its slavery to capitalism and consumerism.Read More »
Synopsis
“I have to play hide and seek by myself to escape my loneliness.” So starts a blog on a mysterious website which quickly spreads like wildfire, starting a dangerous online game. At 3:00 in the afternoon, a teddy bear stuffed with rice and nails is sunk into a bathtub. The lights go out and the player is required to stab the bear with the knife, then write their experiences in the blog. But lately the comments have taken a dark, demented turn, as if the players are being possessed.Read More »
Shogo (Ryuta Sato) is the host of “Love Lines,” a late night radio call-in show where he offers advice and/or sarcastic remarks to the lovelorn. On this night, the station is in the process of relocating, forcing Shogo and his staff to use the antiquated Studio 6. Not only is all the equipment outdated, but there are stories about the studio being haunted. Rumor has it that an on-air talent committed suicide in the DJ’s booth decades ago. Shogo doesn’t want to hear any ghost stories, though; he just wants to do his show.Read More »
Ava, an Iranian woman suffering from depression, blames recent political events in Iran for her troubled mental state and goes to a psychologist. The psychologist advises her to take on physical work, and later, to work on a play. However, the play, inspired by the reality and problems of her society, is banned. It is election time. The city is alive with possibilities. A new wave of hope has sent people massing into the streets to participate, to vote against the current president. Everywhere there is singing, dancing, action— a vibrant, passionate vision of a very different future for her country. But Ava still doesn’t believe change will come. She leaves her home and talks to people in the streets, trying desperately to rekindle her own hope.
The film is part documentary, part fiction.Read More »
Quote:
Shot on a digital video camera by the then 14-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf, Joy Of Madness is, in the words of its precociously talented young director, “a documentary on the surface but a feature film in essence.”
Partly it’s an idiosyncratic account of Hana’s elder sister Samira attempting to cast her own film, At Five In The Afternoon, with non-professionals in war-scarred Kabul in autumn 2002. It’s also a revealing portrait of a shattered society still traumatised by its experiences under the terrifying rule of the Taliban.Read More »
synopsis
Jan Dara grows up in a house lacking in love but abundant in lust. He quickly picks up the sinful way of life of the man who married his mother after she became pregnant from being raped. His ‘father’s’ mistress welcomes the young boy into her literal bosom. Wanting badly to know his real father, Jan leaves the house, only coming back after Khun Luang’s daughter falls pregnant out of wedlock. Jan does a favor to his ‘father’ by marrying her, even though he is deeply in love with the mistress. The truth about his birth, as Jan will later learn, is as confusing and messed up as his present life and the lives of those around him.Read More »