2010s

On January 21st 1975, in a village in the north of Portugal, a child writes to his parents who are in Angola to tell them how sad Portugal is. On July 13th 2011, in Milan, an old man remembers his first love. On May 6th 2012, in Paris, a man tells his baby daughter that he will never be a real father. During a wedding ceremony on September 3rd 1977 in Leipzig, the bride battles against a Wagner opera that she can’t get out of her head. But where and when have these four poor devils begun searching for redemption?Read More »

In an Iranian juvenile detention center, a group of adolescent girls serve their sentence for the grave crime of murdering their father, their husband or another male family member. Filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei built a remarkable relationship with these inmates, whose frank conversations and playful interactions he observes, and who privately open up about the consequences of, and sometimes the reasons for, their action.

Occasionally he leaves them alone with the camera, allowing it to become a tool for them to address both their victims in the afterlife and their accomplices—three of the girls committed their father’s killing together with their mothers, who are now on death row.Read More »

Feature documentary about the life and work of MC Escher.

Letterboxd review
★★★★ Watched by NotASexyVamp 17 Feb 2019

After a slow start, this becomes a seriously satisfying film about a great artist. Escher considered his work “a search for the endless” and this film argues he achieved that. By using the tools of cinema to bring his art to life, we can discover the way it operates, the nuanced construction behind it. By using Escher’s own words (brought to life by Stephen Fry), we see his view on his work. Awe-inspiring.Read More »

The grandmother of filmmaker Yuki Kawamura dies after spending fifty days in a coma; with the whole family we accompany her through this journey.

SYNOPSIS
Grandmother death is an opportunity for each and everyone to reflect upon mourning, and beyond that, upon life, its multiple forms, its disappearance as well as its inexhaustible resources, and the signs of its infinite diversity. Life’s beauty is in water, mist and foam, in lichens and trees, in this grandmother’s dying face, and in her family’s care, affection and joking, in her children’s every word, every breath.Read More »

Two women in their 70s, were close best friends when teenagers but never quite acted on their attraction to each other. The women meet again 50 years later by accident, with one a traditional farm housewife, the other a lesbian music professor about to retire. The film follows the next 80 days of the women’s rediscovery and exploration of their teenage relationship.Read More »

Synopsis:
A story about a boy who gets into an adventure with a stranger hoping to meet his grandmother.Read More »

Quote:
Raised as a rigorous vegetarian, doe-eyed freshman Justine following in her parents’ footsteps, she is sent off to the reputable Saint-Exupéry Veterinary school where the black sheep of the family, her big sister Alexia, is already studying. There, young virginal Justine, leaving the familial shelter, will abruptly move into a mad new world of school traditions, vicious initiation tests and hard partying, utterly unprepared though for the rough year start only rush week’s mandatory hazing can offer. As a result, with Alexia reluctantly showing her the ropes but only halfway, Justine during the long-established trial of raw offal-eating, she will be forced to chew over her devout herbivorous beliefs and swallow a fresh chunk of bright-red rabbit kidney, unknowingly descending deep into her uncharted animalistic tendencies. Before long, repulsion will be replaced with an unprecedented, equally unquenched and palpable craving for raw meat, transforming Justine into a monstrous carnivore …Read More »

Summary:
Since its founding in 1989, Strand Releasing has brought bold independent, art-house, and documentary films from around the world to American screens and home video, including many trailblazing works of queer cinema. To commemorate its thirtieth anniversary, Strand asked more than thirty filmmakers to contribute a short film shot on an iPhone to this omnibus celebration. The casually brilliant results—which include contributions by Andrew Ahn, Fatih Akin, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Gregg Araki, Catherine Breillat, Brady Corbet, Alain Guiraudie, Christophe Honoré, Jon Jost, Isaac Julien, Bruce LaBruce, Rithy Panh, João Pedro Rodrigues, Ira Sachs, James Schamus, Cindy Sherman, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Lulu Wang, and John Waters, among others—exhibit the wild eclecticism and aesthetic freedom that Strand has cultivated and championed for three decades.Read More »

David, who gets by doing odd jobs, meets Lena, who has just moved up to Paris, and falls in love. But soon after, his life is brutally interrupted by the sudden death of his sister. Beyond the shock, and the pain, David now finds himself alone with his young niece Amanda to care for.Read More »