Quote:
Though he has made terrific mainstream dramas, such as Tokyo Sonata and Shokuzai/Penance, when Asian film lovers hear the name Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the first thing they’ll likely think of is the gifted Japanese director’s ghost and horror movies (Pulse, Journey to the Shore). It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that for his France-set Daguerreotype (Le Secret de la chambre noire),a feature with a lot of firsts — Kurosawa’s first project shot abroad; his first in another language; his first with a European crew… — that he falls back on a familiar genre.

The result is a film that feels at once familiar and different and, surely not coincidentally, it would be hard to find two words that better describe the ghosts of people we know have passed on.

Beautifully made, though with just a faint hint of mothballs about the project, this Platform premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival should find be of interest to fans of the director but also to a slightly wider, Francophile audience.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the most versatile and in-demand French actor for international directors in recent years has been A Prophet star Tahar Rahim, who since his breakout in 2009 has worked with such renowned directors as Fatih Akin, Ashgar Farhadi, Kevin Macdonald and Lou Ye. In Kurosawa’s film, Rahim plays Jean, a Parisian who has difficulties making ends meet but then stumbles into a job as the assistant of reclusive photographer, Stephane (Belgian veteran actor Olivier Gourmet in a role that would’ve been for Kurosawa regular Koji Yakusho had this film been in Japanese).

Stephane lives and works in a beautiful if somewhat rundown old mansion on the outskirts of Paris with his 22-year-old daughter, Marie (Constance Rousseau, Simon Killer), an otherworldly blonde who reminds the outwardly stoic but not-so-secretly melancholic Stephane of his dead wife. Marie poses for the daguerreotypes of the English title, which often require hours of standing still, with creepy constructions of metal bars behind her back and limbs helping her keep her body in place.

Though the film is set in the present, there is a distinct — and often slightly eerie — pull from the past that permeates every frame. When Jean first visits the old mansion, doors squeak and he thinks he sees a woman in an old-fashioned dress in the monumental staircase, as if the home’s first inhabitants were still around. And Stephane not only seems to mourn his wife, Denise, but there’s the distinct sensation that he’s trying to make her come back to life again in the life-size, silver-plated copper plates he shoots of their daughter (daguerreotypes were the first type of “photos” available, some 175 years ago). As if to underline the point he’s stuck in the past, it’s made clear in a chuckle-inducing interlude (which features Mathieu Amalric), that regular fashion shoots, on which he has to occasionally rely for money, are something Stephane abhors.

Adding to the sensation that the contemporary story lives at least partially in the past is the classically elegant camerawork of French cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine — who, coincidentally, also shot the documentary Kurosawa’s Way, about Kiyoshi’s colleague and namesake, Akira Kurosawa — and Gregoire Hetzel’s ditto, occasionally swelling score, with its harp and violin solos.

The refined and feather-light haunting quality of Kurosawa’s best ghost movies is certainly present here but the narrative in the second part isn’t streamlined enough for constant character identification. The events that unfold after Jean falls in love with Marie create a kind of parallel narrative that feeds into the film’s final act though the specifics of this aren’t always clear. There are also several subplots, including one with a realtor (Malik Zidi) with designs on the house and Marie’s plan to move to Toulouse where she could work as a botanist, that feel like they’ve been boiled down from more novelistic and thematically relevant stories to snippets that aren’t always entirely legible anymore.

That said, Rahim delivers another self-effacing performance as a working-class man sucked into a world that’s not his who has to try to find his bearings. It is thanks to his work that audiences will remain hooked. A double-take scene in an empty church is an especially strong moment because of Rahim’s (and Kurosawa’s) tacit understanding of understatement. With her alabaster skin and strawberry blonde hair, Rousseau has no problem incarnating a timeless beauty and her scenes away from the mansion imbue her puppet-like character with a real joie de vivre. Gourmet, finally, is reliable as a man who not only clings to his work when life no longer makes sense but actually tries to find some kind of salvation through his art.

Technically, the film is impeccably controlled.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa - (2016) Daguerrotype.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 6 min
Size: 	2.80 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x428 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 976 kb/s
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Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/B03A02850754053/Kiyoshi_Kurosawa_-_(2016)_Daguerrotype.mkv https://nitro.download/view/37DB807704B70F2/Kiyoshi_Kurosawa_-_(2016)_Daguerrotype.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Le secret de la chambre noire AKA Daguerrotype (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

“Two men share not only the same genes, but a common quest…”

Synopsis:
Homer and Joe follow the course of a Croatian river on board a swaying boat, almost against their will, flanked by an unknown dog who has invited himself along on their journey without warning. Very quickly, we realise that the two men are strangers to one another, ignoring the blood tie that binds them to one another. Their father, who one of the two men didn’t know well enough whilst the other perhaps knew him too well, has just died, leaving them an unresolved mystery surrounding the circumstances of his death: was he murdered or did he commit suicide?

	
En.amont.du.fleuve.2016.576p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 32 min
Size: 	1.30 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x428 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 832 kb/s
BPP: 	0.174
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 176 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/DCB323521B83E3E/En.amont.du.fleuve.2016.576p.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/E8FFA51085B0BCC/En.amont.du.fleuve.2016.576p.DE.srt
https://nitro.download/view/40D30F8523AE74E/En.amont.du.fleuve.2016.576p.EN.srt
https://nitro.download/view/C424A10B2A47667/En.amont.du.fleuve.2016.576p.FR.srt

Language(s):French (mainly), English, Croatian
Subtitles:English, French, German

The post Marion Hänsel – En amont du fleuve AKA Upstream (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
SK1 is French police jargon for “Serial Killer 1,” the codename given in the 1990s to a rapist and murderer who preyed on young women in eastern Paris. Nicknamed “The Beast of Bastille,” the culprit, later identified as Guy Georges…

844MB | 2h 00m | 720×300 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EAA041472982982/L.Affaire.SK1.2014.FRENCH.BDRip.x264-FRiES.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/30E8CC039666D75/L’AFFAIRE.SK1.2014.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-HDS_en.srt
or
https://fikper.com/BqM0a6qKbd/L.Affaire.SK1.2014.FRENCH.BDRip.x264-FRiES.mkv
https://fikper.com/iHr9SEY0l1/L’AFFAIRE.SK1.2014.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-HDS_en.srt

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Frédéric Tellier – L’affaire SK1 (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Disheartened after a shocking event that took place in his firm, a compliant and committed employee loses the ground under his feet and revolts.

Quote:
“Sauf le respect que je vous dois” starts like one of those recent socially-committed French movies ( such as “Ressources humaines”, “Marie-Line”, “Violence des échanges en milieu tempéré”, “Le couperet” …) that courageously examine the deterioration of today’s working conditions and industrial relations.

Indeed, in a firm named DSBO and located in the West of France (but exemplifying a lot of others worldwide), you have no other choice but work hard, all too often after office hours, give up holidays, neglect your family or else …

One of the employees, Simon Lacaze(Jean-Michel Portal), a reluctant, hypersensitive young man,bridles up, fighting desperately for a minimum of free time to be spent with his wife and friends, among whom François Durrieux (Olivier Gourmet). To no avail, as he ends up being fired by his boss (deceptively pleasant Jean-Marie Winling). And ignominiously so… Simon chooses to commit suicide in his office the very night a party is being given by his self-satisfied employer.

At this stage of the story, director Fabienne Godet and co-writer Franck Vassal could opt for a militant, feel good tone, having the characters gradually become aware of the situation they are in, go on strike to protest against the unfair treatment they are given and win their case. But the authors are not the optimistic kind and although they do believe that unity makes strength they know that unity is not easily achieved. Instead, they choose to describe François’ righteous but lonely rebellion against the system. Too tortured, too awkward, too violent to involve his colleagues in an organized movement, he starts drifting alone, going round in circles, on a winding road leading nowhere.

The tone is bitter, mirroring the current situation in many a company today, not indulging in false hopes. Godet, whose first feature film this is, proves an able director. A first-rate cast helps: Gourmet, Blanc, Portal, Cotillard, Depardieu and young Jeffrey Barbeau give intense performances and make the film genuinely poignant and never goody-goody. A no-nonsense work that deserves to be seen.

1.67GB | 1h 30m | 1024×554 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/713BDD940CA5ECA/Sauf_le_respect_que_je_vous_dois.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/4AD306AEE02A468/Sauf_le_respect_que_je_vous_dois.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English,French HOH

The post Fabienne Godet – Sauf le respect que je vous dois AKA Burnt Out (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Roger uses his son Igor to ruthlessly traffic and exploit undocumented immigrants. When one of the immigrants is killed, Igor is guilt-ridden and wants to care for the dead man’s family against his father’s orders.

2.01GB | 1h 34m | 960×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/691D39F78AEF545/La.Promesse.1996.TRUEFRENCH.Criterion.Collection.BDRip.576p.x264.AC3-zitoune69.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/14BED11047EA280/La.Promesse.1996.TRUEFRENCH.Criterion.Collection.BDRip.576p.x264.AC3-zitoune69.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/16C41E8E015E7BF/La.Promesse.1996.TRUEFRENCH.Criterion.Collection.BDRip.576p.x264.AC3-zitoune69.part2.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/3D207B4BB7BE669/La.Promesse.1996.TRUEFRENCH.Criterion.Collection.BDRip.576p.x264.AC3-zitoune69.part3.rar

Language(s):French,Romanian
Subtitles:English

The post Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne – La promesse AKA The Promise (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A joinery instructor at a rehab center refuses to take a new teen as his apprentice, but then begins to follow the boy through the hallways and streets.

2.18GB | 1h 39m | 953×572 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/A24A64C46D3D983/The.Son.2002.PAL.DVD.x264-Tree.mkv https://nitro.download/view/13FA8381DA30337/Dardenne.Brothers.Interview.PAL.DVD.x264-Tree.mkv https://nitro.download/view/F71EB2913E33E2B/Olivier.Gormet.Interview.PAL.DVD.x264-Tree.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, Italian

The post Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – Le Fils AKA The Son [+Extras] (2002) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Frank, a man of action who worked his way up all by himself, dedicates his life to work. No matter the place or the circumstances, be it day or night, he’s on the phone, handling the cargo ships he charters for major companies. But when he has to deal with a crisis situation, Frank makes a brutal decision and gets fired. Profoundly shaken, betrayed by a system to which he gave his all, he has to progressively question himself to save the one connection that still matters to him: the bond he’s managed to maintain with his youngest daughter, Mathilde.

1.37GB | 1 h 41 min | 1280×676 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/380D01733A77C0B/Those.Who.Work.AKA.Ceux.qui.travaillent.2018.720p.WEB.AAC2.0.x264-gooz.mkv

Language:French
Subtitles:English, Italian

The post Antoine Russbach – Ceux qui travaillent AKA Those Who Work (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.