2000s

Synopsis: Jed and Chloe, in their early 20’s, live a very simple life in the city. They love each other, find happiness in the smallest things and plan to get married. One day the death of Chloe’s cat triggers inconsolable sadness and a deep confusion in the meaning of life for both Jed and Chloe. Chloe’s tears keep her home but Jed begins a fruitless search for the meaning of life, hoping he can bring back Chloe’s smile. Alone at night he sees a tramp Max on TV whom he believes may hold the key. Jed visits him in the city dump. The awkward duo starts a journey that unexpectedly brings newfound hope to both men and Chloe.Read More »

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Residents of an enclosed neighborhood in the middle of Mexico DF are shocked by a violent crime, and for one resident in particular, young Alejandro, the drama is ratcheted up when he encounters the lone kid who escaped the event and is hiding out within the neighborhood’s borders.Read More »

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Thirty-four-year-old Daniel is the first European with Down syndrome to have graduated from university. He starts a social services job in Seville, where he meets free-spirited co-worker Laura. They become fast friends, drawing the attention of both their co-workers and families. Their unique relationship becomes problematic when Daniel falls in love with her. But these rebellious souls refuse to bend to the rules and they find friendship and love as they have never known.Read More »

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British director Suri Kishnamma follows his quiet character study A Man of No Importance (1994) with this raucous feel-good suicide-pact comedy-drama. The film opens with buddies Jake (Andrew Lee Potts) and Steven (Robby Barry) enjoying a little joie de vivre on French ski slopes during a school holiday until a freak avalanche kills everyone in their high school class except, of course, Jake, Steve, and an adult chaperone who remains in a coma throughout the movie. The two cogent survivors return to their coastal community with much tabloid attention. Jake’s divorced mother Shelley (Anastasia Hille) is barely able to keep it together with anti-depressants and welfare checks. She leans on Jake, her eldest son, for emotional stability. Steven, on the other hand, loathes his ice queen socialite mother (Jacqueline Bisset) and his anal-retentive politico father. Traumatized in two different ways — Steven slides into steely cynicism while Jake delves into weepy despondency — the two agree to a blood pact: they will spend the following year living it up in nihilist glee, after which time they will duly off themselves. As the year of mayhem unfolds — including robbing banks, torching schools, and eating ice cream in Timbuktu — their friendship and their fidelity to their pact is questioned.Read More »

Three friends begin a dangerous three-way relationship that spirals out of control, leading to dire consequences that haunt them ten years later.Read More »

In busy downtown Seoul, a thuggish young man notices a fresh-faced college student who sits on a bench. He stares then sits next to her. She looks at him as if he’s vermin, rises and walks to another bench. He sits staring. Her boyfriend arrives, she points to the stranger, the boyfriend shrugs and puts his arm around her to walk away. The stranger starts to leave as well, turns, goes to them, takes her face firmly in his hands and kisses her long and hard. The boyfriend tries unsuccessfully to break them apart, then soldiers beat the stranger. She demands an apology. He is silent. She slaps him and spits on him. They leave. The next day, he sets out to ruin her. How can this end?Read More »

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Ume (Kyoko Kishida) and Kame (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) are two elderly sisters who live in a large house packed with discarded items they find while rummaging through trash in their town. One day, the two women find some red yarn and bring it home. That evening, the women discover a young girl (Ayu Kitaura) who has entered their home and knitting a sweater with their red wool. Who is this girl?Read More »

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First part of a “trilogy of modern times” (the second one is La Blessure, and third – La question humaine).

Paria follows the path of two characters, Momo and Victor. Momo –remarkably played by Gérald Thomassin– lives in the streets, while Victor, on the edge of poverty, loses his apartment when he loses his job. Their destinies will come across during the night of the “millennium” which will be celebrated in a social pick-up bus. By a brilliant inversion of the points of view, the opening sequence, shot form the bus, in which the city night is threatening, takes a totally different aspect in the middle of the film. The events take another relief as the outcast have been given a face, taking back their humanity. In the wonderful sequence that follows, Blaise, one of the homeless is taken care of in a refuge where the outcast are healed and washed, far away in the suburbs, away from the good society. Victor and Momo, thanks to love, will find hope in a better future. Filmed in a documentary way, in DV under the cold urban lights, Paria catches the dark side of the city, the space between the spaces, the left-overs, and frees the speech of the outcast the society don’t know what to do with.Read More »

After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while cutting apart the tissue, he partially recalls his accident. Later, when he sees a tattoo in the arm of the corpse, he discloses that she was his girlfriend and becomes obsessed to go further in the examination of the body.Read More »