Many years ago, in a nearly deserted town at the foot of a mountain, lives Agostino with his wife Nina and his son Giovanni. The mountain rises up like a wall blocking out the sun that never reaches their fields below, now reduced to just stones and underbrush. Agostino, even though everything suggests him to leave, decides that the destiny of his family is there, among the peaks. He is not only driven by stubbornness, but by the certainty that our roots cannot betray us and that with the help of our spirit we can bring the sun on every destiny.Read More »
The tale of duplicitous husband and father Julien, a real estate agent who falls in love with Alice, a young client – who, it turns out, works in Julien’s wife Marie’s tea shop.Read More »
Quote: 143 RUE DU DESERT is a portrait of Malika, an elderly woman who runs a rest-stop café on the side of National 1, Algeria’s main highway. Through the various patrons who stop for eggs, coffee or tea, we become intimately acquainted with this eccentric woman, whose opinions on a variety of subject matters entertain, enlighten, and baffle in equal measure. Most of the customers know her so well that we suspect they perhaps stop not for the tea, but for her company. The film almost never leaves the inside of her small café, which serves also as her home. However, with every new shot, Ferhani manages to reveal a new fragment of this minuscule space, which keeps the film surprisingly dynamic. Ferhani does not hold sway over Malika’s representation, which is one of the most satisfying elements of the film. Malika seems aware of her character’s cinematic construction, and even dares to contradict statements about her life from one moment to the next, in a scene that is as performative as any fiction. Even though the film provides us with real-time access to this woman’s world, she retains a sense of privacy, which is the main source of the film’s mystery. (Nico Pereda)Read More »
Quote: Sayoko has moved away from the city centre and into the suburbs. She gets her hair done at a beauty salon. When she replies to a courtesy follow-up e-mail from the stylist things take an unexpected turn involving her visiting the home of the stylist, her husband and the barber’s girlfriend.Read More »
18-year-old Caspar wants to reach the top, no matter what. He carries out small-time break-ins for Jamal, before moving on to work for big player Björn. All goes well, until Jamal’s gang decide they want revenge. What starts with pushing and shoving soon escalates into armed conflict. This is a big test for Caspar: is he ruthless enough for this battle? And will he drag his younger brother into it?Read More »
A woman and her 10-year-old son face, in their own way, the mourning for the death of the husband and father, which took place in a factory, while the waiting and the recollection for the day of the funeral grow all around.Read More »
Housemaids are an integral part of the household in Brazil, and participate in the day-to-day life of the family. The employment of housemaids is almost obligatory among the middle and upper classes of the country. The vast majority of these housemaids are black women, who face high levels of inequality based on their gender, race and social class. Their role in the household raises important questions about public and private space, endurance and choice, and labor and family life.Read More »
“João Bénard da Costa was the head of Cinemateca Portuguesa for eighteen years. I walked down his memory lane and found his love for painting, for churches, for Proust and Musil, for Italy, films, Mozart, and for his friends. But what I really wanted was to depict the contradictory man of flesh and blood, a free man.” Manuel MozosRead More »
