2010s

An uninflected, docu-like study of an 18-year-old Dutch woman searching for her birth mother. (Variety)Read More »

A look within the walls of the New York Public Library.

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The director’s latest magisterial study of a public institution is a tribute to the power of education and the importance of community, characteristically ambitious yet surprisingly brisk.

Patience is a virtue; it is also a lion. One hundred and sixteen years old, the white marble beast has guarded the steps outside the main branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) with her identical counterpart, Fortitude. The principles they embody have sustained Frederick Wiseman across the half-century of his unique career, which arguably culminates in this, his 42nd documentary film. A quietly magisterial enterprise, over the course of 197 minutes it visits the myriad buildings and activities which serve the city under the NYPL’s banner and lion-head logo.Read More »

Karol, Junior, Ronaldo and Caio are in their last month of school at a public institution in Rio de Janeiro. Immersed in the tangled wires covering the slum’s sky and the sudden blackouts, these four youngsters are affected by the city crisis and reinvent themselves in the face of adversity.Read More »

In this documentary by a veteran Italian journalist Silvestro Montanaro some of the conspirators behind Sankara’s death are interviewed. The rise and fall of The Burkinabé Revolution is placed in the international context.

Highly recommendable viewing, especially in light of the latest events.

“A true journalist enters the palace of power only if he has to and always head up. He knows he represents the people’s desire for knowledge. He never obeys any orders nor does he accept the given truth. The only master a true journalist has is the genuine and critical story that he has to tell and the only editor he listens to is his audience.”

Silvestro Montanaro (1954 – 2020)Read More »

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes at the National Gallery in a journey to the heart of a museum inhabited by masterpieces of Western art from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.
This three-hour epic has no voiceover, no score and no added sound effects. The nearest thing to music is the drone of the polishing machines at dawn. In a richly detailed, beautifully nuanced portrait of the gallery’s working life, we are guided gently from board meeting to retouching workshop, from gallery floor, to seminar room, from the difficult financial decisions facing the charity’s executives to visitors’ awed appreciation of the exhibitions.
Combining a vivid sense of how vast the gallery’s many activities are with an eye for droll observational detail, the film reveals how the gallery works and its relations with its staff, public and paintings.Read More »

Summary: In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.Read More »

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Helmed by three female directors, this omnibus features three films set in China, Thailand and Singapore. Each story occurs at a specific meal-time, and seeks to interpret the frailties and complexities of love through different East Asian perspectives. All three stories are tethered with the question, “Will you marry me?” Mirroring the repasts themselves, Breakfast and Dinner are heavier in tone, while Lunch is light with a sprinkle of humor.Read More »

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When it is time for the Chinese gaokao, a two-day national college entrance exam, the entire country comes to a standstill. For nearly ten million high school students, this exam not only determines where and if they get to study but the fates of their entire families as well. Like so many others, Nian has been single-mindedly preparing for the exam, cutting everything else out of her life. When she becomes the target of relentless bullying, fate brings her together with small-time criminal Bei and the two form a strong friendship. Before they can completely retreat into a world of their own, the two are dragged in the middle of a murder case of a teenage girl where they are the prime suspects. In this dramatic thriller, Derek Kwok-Cheung Tsang paints a bleak picture of an oppressive society, in the guise of a gripping fairy-tale love story, exposing the dark world of bullying and societal pressures of achievement facing today’s youth.Read More »

Follows a handful of characters living in Algiers in the wake of a civil war that lasted throughout the 1990s.Read More »