2010s

Synopsis:
Centaur is a quiet, small and modest man, a loving father of a little boy that has never spoken a word and the husband of young, deaf-mute Maripa. Together they lead a simple life in a small village of Kyrgyzstan. Centaur is above all a respected man among his neighbors, a man beyond any suspicion, but he has a belief deeply rooted inside him. He still believes that Kyrgyz people once united and invincible thanks to their horses, have been punished by Heavens for misusing that power to achieve their mercenary goals; Beyond any suspicion, Centaur becomes a horse thief, as he thinks only a genuine racer riding at night and praying for forgiveness can write off the curse. But his well-hidden secret cannot be kept for long. When the truth shines, he will need to decide the destiny of his family, co-villagers and his own.Read More »

Quote:
“MDMA is a one-shot experiment that begins with Lin and Boyle taking the titular drug and, in what appears to be an unedited two-hour shot, meander around Manhattan, getting lost on the subway and ending up giving each other a sarcastically ironic interview while on the ferris wheel inside Times Square’s Toys ‘R Us.”Read More »

Quote:
“Tao Lin and Megan Boyle follow 17-year-old fashion blogger Bebe Zeva around Las Vegas for a night and film it on a MacBook.”
“In the film, which took one night to film and 24 hours to edit, Tao Lin and Megan Boyle follow Zeva around her home city of Las Vegas. Zeva plays the part of compliant diva, welcoming them into her lavish condo then taking them through casinos, malls and Planet Hollywood as she’s filmed by Lin and Boyle with a MacBook while they ask her questions like, “How many Twitter followers does the toilet have?” “Would you rather weigh 500 pounds or not have two arms?” “Who has the best internet nose?” Sometimes you can’t hear what they’re saying. Sometimes there are jarring sounds as if the MacBook hit a wall accidentally.Read More »

Quote:
Young married couple Tim and Lee have planted the seeds of a family in their East L.A. duplex. Three years after the birth of their son, they’re still adjusting to the joy and pain of life with kid, navigating potty talk at the dinner table, disagreeing over preschools, and putting off doing their taxes. For a change of pace, they decide to house-sit for one of Lee’s Westside yoga clients. Once there, Tim discovers something suspicious in the yard that gets the wheels in his head turning, and Lee, worried that he will become obsessed with digging deeper, decides to drop their toddler off with her mother for a much-needed night out on the town. Sans-wife, Tim invites his buddies over, and a “boys-will-be-boys” scenario ensues, full of drinking, awkward joint-passing, and perhaps getting a bit too close to a girl who isn’t the mother of his child.Read More »

Quote:
The “elefante blanco” (white elephant) in Pablo Trapero’s eponymous film is the phantasmagorical structure of what was to be Latin America’s biggest hospital, construction of which was approved in 1937 and started in 1938. In line with Argentina’s sociopolitical upheaval, the project was never completed and is now home to thousands of outcasts who live among rubble, rats, pollution, illness, crime, deadly drug lords’ feuds.
Trapero’s Elefante blanco, focusing on the painstaking work of two shanty-town priests and a social worker, is a trip through urban hell. Contrary to the barrage of political harangue we are subjected to on a daily basis, Elefante blanco lays out the bare facts: a Third World country playing welfare state but in reality struggling to stay afloat. No other aborted social project could make such a visible, powerful impact as the elefante blanco, palpable proof that not everyone is given the same possibilities to attain social mobility and think ahead to a better future.Read More »

After serving a 12-year sentence for killing a man for sleeping with his wife, a man ponders whether he should try and reconcile with his family, or take revenge on those who turned him in.
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A short documentary that follows director Charlie Tyrell as he tries to uncover a better understanding of his deceased father through the random objects he inherited, including a pile of VHS dirty movies.Read More »

Feminism, Victoria Benedictsson, Leandro N. Alem, the Radical Party in Argentina, suicide, stunts, Edgar Allan Poe, the complicated relationship between low-budget films with a political message and the film industry, Robert Louis Stevenson, fiction, facts, greed, gold treasure left by the Jesuits in Argentina, the 19th century vs. the present and the search for truth and wisdom form the background for this portrait of a clash between a Swedish artist and an Argentinian director (Viennale)Read More »

Dysfunctional family and culture run amok in Toilet, which had an absolutely packed house last night at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and had many of the cast & crew in attendance at the screening. The film certainly has it’s Toronto roots showing as it was filmed here (although it’s actually set in the US), with familiar faces & locations on screen. We follow a family through a dysfunctional and eccentric set siblings Ray, Lisa and Maury and their grandmother from Japan, however a language barrier exists between the generations. It’s not the only barrier here as there are strong emotional barrier in each of the characters, all of whom have their own issues to work though. It’s an interesting tale of the individual journeys with the collective family journey, which although unintended become completely intertwined.Read More »