2010s

Acclaimed screenwriter and filmmaker Haruhiko Arai dusts off his director’s hat following his 1997 Body and Soul to turn a passion project of 30 years into a reality. An adaption of Yuichi Takai’s prize-winning 1983 novel of the same name, This Country’s Sky is a nuanced drama set in Suginami, Tokyo towards the destitute final years of WWII. Satoko (Fumi Nikaido) is a 19 year old girl falling passionately in love with her older married neighbor (Hiroki Hasegawa), who has been spared combat due to his failing the military physical examination. Even away from the battlefield, as they grow closer their feelings are caught up in the violence of war.Read More »

Erik has is own motorbike workshop in a sleepy little town. He may have the telling word ‘scoundrel’ tattooed onto his lower arm but he nonetheless creates an impression of a well-behaved average Joe. His relationship with his girlfriend Julia is going well and her daughter Linda is very fond of her new Dad. But then all of a sudden the mysterious Henry appears and begins following him about like a sinister shadow. The more Erik tries to shake off his diabolical guest the more Henry intrudes into his life. But then when a violent gangster named Keitel enters the fray and threatens not only Erik but Julia and Linda, Erik’s seemingly ideal world begins to run off the rails.Read More »

Synopsis:
When a boy loses his father he moves in with his older half-brother. The older sibling and is girlfriend are indeed kind and helpful and treat the boy well. Still, he is lonely and finds consolation in his love for dancing with his male friend. However, many strange occurrences are happening in town and the dance is taking an almost metaphysical dimension.Read More »

Tibetan Buddhist Master Choogyal Namkhai Norbu watches as his western-born son, Yeshi, who was recognized at birth as the reincarnation of a famous spiritual master, considers departing from tradition to embrace the modern world.Read More »

The turmoil that has overtaken Hong Kong since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has spawned a new generation of young, passionately committed activist filmmakers; they want to tell Hong Kong’s story with Hong Kong voices. And the best indie documentary to have emerged so far from the HKSAR is this year’s Yellowing, by Chan Tze Woon, a 29-year-old with degrees in policy studies and film production. Hong Kong’s fraught, tense relationship with its mainland Chinese overseers came to a head with the Umbrella Movement of 2014. A crowd of protesters stormed Civic Square on September 27. The next day police shocked most residents of the HKSAR by attacking the growing crowds with volleys of tear gas, whereupon a wide cross section of Hong Kongers occupied the streets in several areas and stayed for almost 6 weeks.Read More »

In the rural outskirts of Gaza City a small community of farmers, the Samouni extended family, is about to celebrate a wedding. It’s going to be the first celebration since the latest war. Amal, Fuad, their brothers and cousins have lost their parents, their houses and their olive trees. The neighborhood where they live is being rebuilt. As they replant trees and plow fields, they face their most difficult task: piecing together their own memory. Through these young survivors’ recollections, Samouni Road conveys a deep, multifaceted portrait of a family before, during and after the tragic event that changed its life forever.Read More »

Lena is in love with her brother Noah. In the desperate attempt to conquer her feelings, she retreats into a world of her own.

Quote:
The juxtaposition between reality and onirism, the lawful and the illicit, dominates Imbach’s entire film. An intentional ambiguity that destabilises and intrigues.
Muriel Del Don, CineuropaRead More »

Quote:
Weird as hell but strangely compelling, Davide Manuli’s The Legend of Kaspar Hauser reenvisions the German youth’s story as a fable existing outside any recognizable reality and revolving around magic, dope, and thumping dance music. With Vincent Gallo hamming his way through not one but two roles, the cult-courting film will be catnip for Gallomaniacs. But the real star is Silvia Calderoni, a stage actress making her apparent film debut in the title role.Read More »

Quote:
Started with Flics and then Commissariat, Virgil Vernier continues here his exploration of our passions. Manifest of his obstinacy of observer and moralist, the exergue here, borrowed from La Bruyère: “The city is divided into various societies, which are like so many small republics, which have their laws, their uses, their jargon, and their words to laugh.” To the program of this sentence follows a fixed frame: outside night, entrance of a nightclub in Paris. A “physiognomist” is at work. He sorts, withdraws behind the silence of the verdict, sometimes argues, distributes, always generous, sentences.Read More »