2000s

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After studying literature at Cairo University, Dunia, 23 years old, wants to become a professional dancer. She attends audition for an oriental dance contest where she recites Arabian poetry without any body movement. She explains to the perplexed jury that a woman can’t move her body or evoke act of love when society ask women to hide their femininity. She is selected and meets Beshir, an intellectual and activist who will supervise her thesis on ecstasy in Sufi love poetry. Their attraction is mutual. This could be liberation for Dunia but the constraints on women in Egyptian society goes deeper than she suspects.Read More »

An innocent teenage girl undergoes her sexual coming of age at the hands of her older aunt.Read More »

Two old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in this breakout feature from Kelly Reichardt, a microbudget study of character and masculinity that introduced many viewers to one of contemporary American cinema’s most independent artists. As expectant father Mark (Daniel London) and nomadic Kurt (Will Oldham) travel by car and foot into the woods in search of some secluded hot springs, their fumbling attempts to reconnect keep butting up against the limits of their friendship and the reality of how much their paths have diverged since their shared youth. Adapted from a short story by Jonathan Raymond and accompanied by an atmospheric Yo La Tengo score, Old Joy is a contemplative, wryly observed triumph whose modest scale belies the richness of its insight.Read More »

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Mei is an exotic, beautiful blind dancer, associated with a dangerous revolutionary gang, known as the House of Flying Daggers. Captured by officers of the decadent Tang Dynasty, Mei finds herself both threatened by and attracted to the most unusual circumstances. Here, her heart and loyalties battle each other, amid warriors in the treetops and dazzling combat the likes of which have never before been seen!Read More »

“Ce vieux rêve qui bouge est sans doute le meilleur film du festival de Cannes”, (Jean-Luc Godard, mai 2001)

From Time Out Film Guide
A young guy turns up at a rundown factory to dismantle some kind of machine before the place closes in a week. In the process, he gets to talk to the understandably morose staff about how they plan to face the future. About work, economics, class, sex, money, happiness and a whole lot more, this unassuming, sometimes funny and always surprising film has been hailed by Godard – perhaps the most sensible thing he’s done in years. It’s near perfect, without an ounce of narrative fat or stylistic gristle, and utterly relevant.Read More »

The earlier of Guiraudie’s two medium-length films looks forward to both No Rest for the Brave and The King of Escape with its tale of a young woman who falls in love with a gay shepherd. During their wanderings, they cross paths with a bandit – played by the director himself – as well as the bounty hunter who’s pursuing him. Sunshine for the Scoundrels announces Guiraudie’s fascination with loners and oddballs, his extravagant imagination and his affection for the rough landscape of France’s Massif Central, whose ruggedness gives the film the flavor of an eccentric Western.Read More »

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Luc goes off on his bicycle to forget his problems. A suit of accidents make him spend the night in a little town of Picardie. He meets Sylvain, who tries to help him, for the best and the worst.Read More »

In 6 Bagatelles (6 Bagatelas), Pedro Costa takes unused scenes from his 2001 documentary on Staub and Huillet, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Oû gît votre sourire enfoui?) and edits them into a new context.Read More »

From The Guardian
Filthy is right. This is a film to counter-balance any lingering misapprehension that the countryside is a place of picturesque tranquillity – and, thank heavens, it is not your everyday Britpic. Andrew Kötting’s second feature, adapted from Zola, is a gallery of bucolic grotesques set in a remote rural community in the early 20th century, long before EU subsidies, mad cows and agribusiness (but not before foot and mouth). The screenplay was written by Kötting and comic Sean Lock.Read More »