2010s

A humorless loner attempts to win the admiration of a drifter with his debut performance at the local comedy club

The Village Voice wrote:
The shaky handheld cinematography might be conventionally modern, but from its opening white-letters-on-red-background credit sequence to its diligent focus on a wayward loner drifting about the outskirts of society and sanity, Bad Fever has the empathetic soul of ’70s American filmmaking. Writer-director Dustin Guy Defa’s stark indie trains its character-study gaze on Eddie (Kentucker Audley), a socially dysfunctional twentysomething who—while living at home with his dour mom (Annette Wright), hanging out in empty diners, and entertaining stand-up comedy dreams by recording anecdotes on cassette—strikes up a random romance with Irene (Eleonore Hendricks), who lives in an abandoned school and has a fondness for kinky videotaping. Read More »

Armed with just his suitcase and a sax, cosmopolitan musician Alex Zhang Hungtai (from the band Dirty Beaches) returns home to the Big Island of Hawaii having been away for nearly a decade. Hungtai, playing a fictional version of himself, takes refuge in a Buddhist B&B with a woman named Akiko (Akiko Matsuda, playing herself). Alex’s experimental free jazz music at first collides with the bell sounds of Akiko’s meditation, but as the film evolves and a friendship develops, the two harmonize.Read More »

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Five young people are involved in a serious car accident that leaves four of them dead. Isabel, the youngest, is the only survivor and helps her four friends realize they have passed on.Read More »

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Jaberg and Hofmann’s film takes us on a cinematic journey through the life and work of Daniel Schmid, one of the most unusual artists within Swiss film. Born into a hotelier family of the 1940s in the village of Flims, surrounded by snow covered mountains, visited by exotic guests from around the world, Daniel Schmid always was a dreamer. The young filmmakers offer a mysterious kaleidoscope of people and places related to the director. Even as a child, Daniel Schmid knew that there was a hidden world, caught between reality and imagination.Read More »

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SHAKEDOWN chronicles explicit performances in an underground lesbian club in Los Angeles. The story functions as a legend where money is both myth and material. Cumulatively, questions arise about how to diagram the before and after of a utopic moment. Directed by Leilah Weinraub.Read More »

“Just A Beginning” follows a nursery school class for a period of two years. But this is a very unusual class as the children, aged three to five study… philosophy! Seated in a circle around a ritually lit candle, the children, in a fresh, funny and sometimes merciless manner, approach the universal subjects of love, power, difference, growing up, death etc. Little by little the philosophy workshop becomes a privileged moment where each child reflects on the words of the other, learns how to listen and to build a discourse. From now on they will be able to think for themselves! With their emotions, their unusual expressions and their contradictions, the children of this nursery school deliver a single testimony on an innovative experiment. “Just A Beginning” is the fabulous true story of a school with an eye on the future.Read More »

Set against the 1950’s “golden age” of American male supremacy, an introverted young photographer (Tye Sheridan) joins a renowned lobotomist (Jeff Goldblum) on a tour to promote the doctor’s recently-debunked procedure. As he increasingly identifies with the asylum’s patients, he becomes enamored with a rebellious young woman (Hannah Gross) and lost in the burgeoning New Age movement of the west. Also starring Denis Lavant and Udo Kier.Read More »

13 year old Marta who is struggling to resettle to the south of Italy after ten years growing up in Switzerland. Bright-eyed and restless, she observes the sights, sounds and smells of the city but feels very much an outsider. Marta is about to undergo the rite of confirmation and she takes catechism but confronts the morality of the local Catholic community. From experiencing her period to making a bold decision to cut her hair, Marta begins to shape her own life for the first time since moving back to Italy. –Quinzaine des RéalisateursRead More »

Sara and her dad Dave move to a small village, which is haunted by suicides among its young inhabitants. Sara falls dangerously in love with one of the teenagers, Jamie, while Dave, as the town’s new police officer, tries to stop the mysterious chain of suicides.Read More »