A man, a child, two wars, a river, a tree. A man and a child meet under a tree on a river bank, sharing the same memory and a secret. They find in each other the serenity, the silence and the time they lost in the flowing water of the river.Read More »
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Considering that his life is a failure, a man records himself leaving a video-message to his loved ones. After this message, which tackles, in funny and sad ways, a lot of issues, both personal and social, he shoots himself in the head. But he fails. And what follows is the a ridiculous and horrific agony, that probably changes the characters’ vision about life… A film done basically in one single shot.Read More »
Little Joe follows Alice (Emily Beecham), a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a corporation engaged in developing new species. She has engineered a special crimson flower, remarkable not only for its beauty but also for its therapeutic value: if kept at the ideal temperature, fed properly and spoken to regularly, this plant makes its owner happy. Against company policy, Alice takes one home as a gift for her teenage son, Joe. They christen it ‘Little Joe.’ But as their plant grows, so too does Alice’s suspicion that her new creation may not be as harmless as its nickname suggests.Read More »
The films confronts two different views of the execution of General Ion Antonescu, Romania’s leader during the Second World War. On one side is silent black-and-white footage of the execution as recorded in 1946 by cameraman Ovidiu Gologanl; on the other are scenes from a biographical film shot in 1994 by director Sergiu Nicolaescu.Read More »
The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster
is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial
speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss.Read More »
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Mike Leigh is often accused of talking down to his characters. With Another Year, this fan of the British auteur can see why. Leigh’s latest is a lovingly told but insufficiently nuanced story of four seasons, a year in the lives of a happy couple and their miserably single friends. It begins in spring with a close-up of a face locked in abject misery: Asked by a counselor how happy she is on a scale from one to 10, Janet (Imelda Staunton) says one, in effect setting the tone for much of the film. The only happiness here belongs to Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and her husband, Tom (Jim Broadbent), whose relationship is as organic as the vegetables they grow in their backyard, but what’s their secret? No one’s asking, including Leigh.Read More »
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“There is no such thing as a murderer, only people who kill.” With these words director Cristi Puiu qualifies his careful study of contemporary Romanian society and of fatal acts such as murder. The film focuses on 42-year-old Viorel who is going through a gloomy period of life that leads him to the point of killing without it being clear whether or not it’s his divorce and his conflict with loved ones provoking him to open fire. The film attempts to demystify the act of murder, rendering it as something in no way spectacular, just as there is nothing remarkable about a person who commits murder. Read More »
Pim, the emotionally abandoned and affection-starved young gay son of a small seaside town’s resident floozy, grows up dreaming intensely of a loving father who will someday come for him, but never does. Frequently home alone, Pim often spends time at a neighbor’s house where another single mom and her two teenage children accept him matter-of-factly. As Pim is about to turn 15, he and neighbor boy Gino become each other’s friend-with-benefits, entering a period of sexual awakening together. Life, however, is all about change, and while Gino (a couple years older) is ready to move on and move out, Pim is not, leaving Pim behind to carry on with his continuing crush for Gino (while Gino’s sister Sabrina develops an unrequited crush for Pim).Read More »
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The acclaimed work of photographer Antoine d’Agata has mostly been a journey into the heart of darkness, dealing with random and nightly encounters, sex and prostitution. So it’s no surprise that the monumental White Noise leads again to the underworld of sex workers, from Cambodia to Norway, from Ukraine to USA. Built around more than 20 monologues, this films delivers trance-like visions of women in rapture induced by sex or narcotics.Read More »