ForeignThe bottom has fallen out for Carlobianchi and Doriano, two small-time Italian crooks. They haven’t been able to mount an honest scam since the 2008 financial crisis and now face the impending mediocrity of middle age. The return of an exiled partner-in-crime from Argentina affords a second chance for long-buried riches, but can Carlobianchi and Doriano put down their beers long enough to keep their eyes on the prize? Along their slow motion, alcoholic grand tour of the Venetian countryside, they cross paths with Giulio, a shy architecture student who reluctantly warms to the sodden pair and indulges their rants about the folly of globalization and the slow decline of local color. Each roadside tavern offers the promise of one last drink – unless the next one ups the ante. Francesco Sossai’s dazzling sophomore feature is many things at once: a road movie, a casual caper, a tribute to a vanishing industrial Italy, a scruffy intergenerational odyssey, and free-flowing bender throug
ForeignAnne is a lawyer with a beautiful home, family and life. When her troubled step-son comes to live with them, she forms an intimate bond with him. Initially a liberating move, soon turns into a disturbing story with devastating consequences.
ForeignThe coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution. We meet nine-year-old Marjane when the fundamentalists first take power, forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. The story then follows her as she cleverly outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden, while living with the terror of government persecution and the Iran/Iraq war. Then Marjane's journey moves on to Austria where, as a teenager, her parents send her to school in fear for her safety and she has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Marjane eventually gains acceptance in Europe, but finds herself alone and horribly homesick, and returns to Iran to be with her family, though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, continuing to speak out against the hypocri
ForeignThis multiple award winner from Tom Tykwer (The Princess And The Warrior) stars Franka Potente as Lola, the orange-haired punk girlfriend of Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a small-time courier for a big-time gangster. Manni is working a standard pickup/drop-off, and everything is going fine until an unforeseen incident makes Lola late to pick him up. One stroke of bad luck leads to another, and by the time Manni calls Lola, he has a big problem: He is supposed to meet his unforgiving boss in 20 minutes with 100,000 marks that suddenly he does not have. Lola rushes out of her apartment, attempting to get to Manni and somehow pick up 100,000 marks along the way. As the seconds tick down, the tiniest choices become life-altering (or -ending) decisions, and the fine line between fate and fortune begins to blur.
ForeignAt the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan's obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History), Magellan presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.
ForeignFour friends, all teachers at various stages of middle age, are stuck in a rut. Unable to share their passions either at school or at home, they embark on an audacious experiment from an obscure philosopher: to see if a constant level of alcohol in their blood will help them find greater freedom and happiness. At first they each find a new- found zest, but as the gang pushes their experiment further, issues that have been simmering for years come to a head and the men are faced with a choice: reckon with their behavior or continue on the same course.
Underscored by delicate and affecting camerawork, director Thomas Vinterberg's spry script, co-written with regular collaborator Tobias Lindholm, uses this bold premise to explore the euphoria and pain of an unbridled life. Playing a once brilliant but now world-weary shell of a man, the ever surprising Mads Mikkelsen delivers a fierce and touching performance.
ForeignGraceful, enigmatic, and often frightening, DOGTOOTH is an ingenious dark comedy that won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, propelling Yorgos Lanthimos to the forefront of contemporary cinema's most ambitious young filmmakers. In an effort to protect their three children from the corrupting influence of the outside world, a Greek couple transforms their home into a gated compound of cultural deprivation and strict rules of behavior. But children cannot remain innocent forever. When the father brings home a young woman to satisfy his son's sexual urges, the family's engineered "reality" begins to crumble, with devastating consequences. Like the haunting, dystopic visions of Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé, DOGTOOTH punctuates its compelling drama with moments of shocking violence, creating a biting social satire that is as profound as it is provocative.
ForeignJacques Tati's gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
ForeignIn the final film in the new 'Mothra' trilogy, King Ghidorah, the most destructive of all the monsters, returns to destroy the Earth. In the end, Mothra is indeed triumphant and takes her place among the greatest of all monsters.
ForeignIn Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode – and murder – joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium’ and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production des
ForeignMeursault (Benjamin Voisin) works as a clerk at an office in Algiers during the French colonial occupation. A modest man who keeps to himself, Meursault finds his routine upended by the sudden death of his mother. At her funeral, he faces scrutiny from all corners for his failure to perform his grief. Meursault’s reputation for otherworldly detachment carries over to all aspects of his life, from his tentative romance with Marie (Rebecca Marder) to his indifference to professional advancement. As Meursault gets swept up in a cycle of escalating reprisals among his neighbors, tensions come to a head when he murders an Arab man on the beach. A Frenchman may offer many defenses for shooting an Arab in Algeria, but Meursault’s refusal of excuse or remorse shakes colonial society to its core. Photographed in sterling, sensuous black-and-white, François Ozon’s new take on Albert Camus’s classic novel of existentialist ennui is a landmark of adaptation, simultaneously faithful to the
ForeignMars is under siege! Just before Halloween 2071, a terrorist bomb destroys a tanker truck on Highway One, close to a densely populated crater city. There are casualties up to half a mile from the blast. 500 killed or injured by what appears to be a biochemical weapon. The rewards for the bombers capture is massive and there are four humans and a dog who really need the money. Down on their luck as usual, the crew of the Bebop get on the case.
ForeignFrom director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes this thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno. Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all...is true love.
ForeignA bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a "collector" of men. Eric Rohmer’s first color film, LA COLLECTIONNEUSE pushes Six Moral Tales into new, darker realms while showcasing the clever, delectably ironic battle-of-the-sexes repartee (in a script written by Rohmer and the three main actors) and effortlessly luscious Nestor Almendros photography that would define the remainder of the series.
ForeignPedro Almodovar is at the top of his game with "All About My Mother," a poignant, at times comedic examination of women in intimate relationships. "All About My Mother" visits themes of female vulnerability and solidarity, but in a new and profoundly mature way. Cecilia Roth plays strong-willed hospital worker Manuela, whose 18-year-old son's accidental death transforms her life. Reading her son's journals, grief-stricken Manuela realizes that he longed to hear about the father he never knew. Forsaking Madrid for Barcelona, she embarks on a search for the man she left almost 20 years before.
ForeignThis critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg's stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer's apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head."
ForeignWith this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in favor of a personal, poetic vision of life as a bittersweet carnival. The infinitely expressive Masina registers both childlike wonder and heartbreaking despair as Gelsomina, loyal companion to the traveling strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn, in a toweringly physical performance), whose callousness and brutality gradually wear down her gentle spirit. Winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, LA STRADA possesses the purity and timeless resonance of a fable and remains one of cinema’s most exquisitely moving visions of humanity struggling to survive in the face of life’s cruelties.
ForeignWinner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is the new film from the celebrated director of Distant and Climates. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them, a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body. As night wears on, details about the murder emerge and the investigators’ own hidden secrets come to light. In the Anatolian steppes, nothing is what it seems; and when the body is found, the real questions begin.
ForeignA famous Paris auctioneer discovers that a valuable painting stolen by the Nazis during World War II is hanging in the home of a factory worker in a small town. As he tries to figure out what to do, he becomes caught between his dishonest intern, his smart ex-wife who is an art expert, and the unsuspecting worker who now faces a difficult moral choice.
ForeignWith her first film in a decade, the fearless 75-year-old French auteur Catherine Breillat (FAT GIRL, THE LAST MISTRESS) proves she’s as provocative as ever with her Cannes-stirring film, which drives down the dark road of uncontrollable passion. A remarkably nuanced, radiant Léa Drucker plays Anne, an attorney who has plateaued in her marriage to Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), a distracted businessman. His son, troubled seventeen-year-old, Theo (Samuel Kircher), from a previous marriage, has recently returned to Pierre’s ineffectual and despondent care. When Pierre leaves town for a business trip, Anne and Théo—confined under the same roof for the first time—find themselves in the throes of an unexpected and dangerously lustful affair, threatening the stability of the household. Music by Kim Gordon heightens the erotic tension of LAST SUMMER, a film that boldly surveys power dynamics, female desire, and fulfillment.
ForeignFifty years ago, the Japanese Defense Forces killed Godzilla or so they thought. When a series of terrifying natural disasters begin to plague Japan, including the inexplicable offshore sinking of a U.S. submarine, a mystic old man warns his nation that Godzilla has come back to destroy Japan as revenge for all the souls lost in the Pacific War. When mere military might can not squash the monster, the mystic man awakens the Holy Beasts of Yamato - King Ghidorah, Mothra and Baragon, sleeping giants that protected Japan in ancient times. These untamed mammoth beasts take on Godzilla with frightening supernatural brute power that has been 2,000 years in the making. Tradition and technology collide in this chilling high-tech, cutting-edge fable.
ForeignAnna, an artist, and Magnús, a fisherman, live with their three children and charismatic sheepdog in the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside. As the fractures in their marriage come to the surface, the couple try to hold onto the afterimages of a life together and make sense of a deep and lingering devotion. Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Godland) brings surprising humor and emotional weight to this gorgeous, intimate, and brilliantly expansive scenes from a marriage, amidst the majestic backdrop of the changing seasons.
ForeignSensual and elegant, Catherine Corsini’s SUMMERTIME follows Carole and Delphine as they fall in love against the backdrop of early feminist activism in 1971 France. After living in the city, Delphine is called home to help with her family farm in the countryside and is forced to choose between her responsibility to them and the life of love she had in Paris with Carole. An enlightening tale about the infatuation of first love and its universal themes.
ForeignWith a warm smile and positive attitude, Floria (Leonie Benesch, The Teachers’ Lounge) arrives at the surgical ward of the Swiss hospital where she works as a nurse on the overnight shift. With one colleague out sick and no replacement on deck, just two nurses and a nervous trainee will have to cover more than two dozen patients. The doctors to whom the nurses are supposed to defer are nowhere to be found. Floria juggles endless tasks: administering medication, updating charts, soothing patients, answering phones, and managing complaints. Surrounded by fluorescent lights, the steady beeping of monitors, and echoing footsteps, Floria struggles to fight off exhaustion and maintain her professional demeanor. Every second counts, and every interruption could mean the difference between life and death.Director Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) skillfully uses real-time tension to examine the emotional cost of frontline care work and the quiet, unglamorous triumph of keeping people alive in a
ForeignIn this beautiful and uplifting gay romance, two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives. Dutch phenom Gijs Blom stars as Sieger, a thoughtful 15-year-old who grapples mightily with his emerging sexuality. Ko Zandvliet co-stars as his love interest, the spirited, outgoing, and popular Marc.In their boyish summer courtship the pair swim, bike, and run — they also share ice creams and kisses as they gradually find the courage to be vulnerable with one another. The romance between them unfolds with a palpable sense of longing, and an aching sequence of heartache as Sieger tries to fight the inevitable outcome. With its authentic and perfectly poignant tone, plus an irresistible pop soundtrack, Mischa Kamp’s Boys ranks as one of the most wholesomely romantic gay teen films ever.
ForeignSummoned with a blood-written note smuggled out of a prison block, an idealistic state lawyer (Alexander Kuznetsov) pushes past the prison's leery authorities to interview an elderly, broken-down Bolshevik (Aleksandr Filippenko). The young attorney, determined to expose the miscarriages of justice that landed the man in confinement, finds the eye of the state turned on him instead, as an ever-tightening net encircles his investigation. Set at the height of the great purge and drenched in the paranoia of Stalin’s police state, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s latest triumph is a chilling, Kafkaesque thriller about the impunity of power and matter-of-fact horrors of fascism.
ForeignFrance, 1789. The prestige of a noble house depends above all on the quality of its table. At the dawn of the French Revolution, gastronomy still is a prerogative of the aristocrats. When talented cooker Pierre Manceron is dismissed by the Duke of Chamfort, he loses the taste for cooking. Back in his country house, his meeting with the mysterious Louise gets him back on his feet. While they both feed a desire of revenge against the Duke, they decide to create the very first restaurant in France.
ForeignIn a shelter in Liège, Belgium, a group of young women face the challenges and exhilaration of motherhood. Looking ahead to an uncertain future, the new mothers aspire to break free of the past and not repeat the cycles of neglect, abuse, and abandonment that have defined their young lives. Jessica grew up in a foster family, and must understand why her biological mother could not keep her. Perla wrestles with the unreliability of her boyfriend, and confronts the possibility that she may need to raise her child alone. Julie has a more stable partner, but cannot imagine parenthood until she overcomes her drug habit once and for all. And Ariane must protect her baby at all costs, with the daunting recognition that her home may not be safe for her daughter. Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, the latest film from master directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta; Two Days, One Night), Young Mothers is a delicate and hopeful study of women on the brink of new life.
ForeignThe most personal film by the underworld poet Jean-Pierre Melville, who had participated in the French Resistance himself, this tragic masterpiece, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, recounts the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought in the Resistance. Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret star as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime. Long underappreciated in France and unseen in the United States, the atmospheric and gripping thriller ARMY OF SHADOWS is now widely recognized as the summit of Melville’s career, channeling the exquisite minimalism of his gangster films to create an unsparing tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
ForeignOne of the sixties' great international art-house sensations, Woman in the Dunes was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal, idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara. Eija Okada plays an amateur entomologist who has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert; when he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kiyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema’s most bristling, unnerving, and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.
ForeignAt 16, Justine is a brilliant, promising student and a strict vegetarian. But when she starts veterinary school, she quickly encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world. Desperate to fit in during the first week of hazing rituals, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time and faces the terrible and unexpected consequences of her actions as her true self emerges.
ForeignThe year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely "erase" their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent "retribution." Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (SAINT LAURENT, NOCTURAMA) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn- of-the-century novella, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, THE BEAST poignantly conv
ForeignThe second installment in Claude Berri’s sprawling rural tragedy that began with JEAN DE FLORETTE, MANON OF THE SPRING follows a beautiful but shy shepherdess (Emmanuelle Béart) as she plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her father’s land caused his death years earlier. Taken together, these masterful adaptations of the novel by Marcel Pagnol stand as high-water marks of the French cinema, recapturing the rich humanist tradition of its classical era.
ForeignBased on a novel by the legendary Marcel Pagnol, JEAN DE FLORETTE is (alongside MANON OF THE SPRING) the first installment in a rich, engrossing epic of greed and deception set amid the bucolic splendor of the Provence countryside. Gerard Depardieu gives one of his great performances as the hunchbacked city slicker Jean, who is determined to make a success of the farm he has inherited—unaware that his new neighbor César (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) have launched a ruthless scheme to take control of the land for themselves.
ForeignClaude Lelouch’s Academy Award–winning international sensation is a paragon of swooning cinematic romanticism and 1960s chic. Against the rain-swept backdrop of the Normandy coast, two widowed single parents—race-car driver Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and film-script supervisor Anne (Anouk Aimée)—find themselves falling for each other. But are they ready to move on from the shadows of their former lovers? Reveling in its stars’ chemistry and unfolding as a sublime swirl of shifting film stocks, whirling camera work, and time- and space-collapsing editing—all set to Francis Lai’s unforgettable score—A Man and a Woman endures as one of the most intoxicating love stories ever told.
ForeignThe first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.
ForeignDissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, PIERROT LE FOU is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.
ForeignVIVRE SA VIE was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna Karina, Godard’s greatest muse, plays Nana, a young Parisian who aspires to be an actress but instead ends up a prostitute, her downward spiral depicted in a series of discrete tableaux of daydreams and dances. Featuring some of Karina and Godard’s most iconic moments—from her movie theater vigil with THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC to her seductive pool-hall strut—VIVRE SA VIE is a landmark of the French New Wave that still surprises at every turn.
ForeignIn the year 198 BC, Cao Cao (CHOW YUN FAT), Prime Minister of the Han Dynasty, ventured to the east and defeated China’s greatest warrior Lu Bu, terrifying every ambitious warlord across the country. Several years later, after taking the Han Emperor under his wing, Cao crowns himself King of Wei. He built a magnificent Bronze Sparrow Island to symbolize his power and rumors spread that he would replace the Emperor. Meanwhile, young lovers Mu Shun (TAMAKI HIROSHI) and Ling Ju (CRYSTAL LIU YI FEI) are taken from a prison camp to a hidden tomb, where they spend five cruel years together, training as assassins for a secret mission. In the year 220 BC astronomical signs predict dramatic change. As a result, Cao’s son Cao Pi (QIU XIN ZHI) and Cao’s followers urge Cao to become the new Emperor - but unknown and opposing forces plot against him. Starring international film legend Chow Yun-Fat, and created by the team behind gripping action dramas such as HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, CU
ForeignEric Rohmer captures the ache of summertime sadness with exquisite poignancy in this luminous tale of self-exploration. The Jules Verne novel of the same name provides the loose inspiration for the story of Delphine (Marie Rivière), a dreamy, introverted young secretary who, reeling from a breakup with her boyfriend, faces the anxiety-inducing prospect of spending her summer vacation alone. As she bounces from a getaway in Cherbourg to the tourist-choked Alps to the sunny beaches of Biarritz, Delphine passes through a whirl of social activity—but through it all remains profoundly alone, searching for the true human connection that seems to perpetually elude her. As honest a portrait of loneliness, depression, and the longing for understanding as has ever been committed to film, THE GREEN RAY stands as one of the most piercingly perceptive works by the French cinema’s keenest observer of human relationships.
ForeignThe Farewell Party is a unique, compassionate and unlikely funny story of a group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home who decide to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of their assistance begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with a life and death dilemma.
ForeignWith TEOREMA, a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.
ForeignFrom critically acclaimed, erotically candid writer/director Pedro Almodóvar (Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) comes a raw, seductive tale based on a novel by British mystery writer Ruth Rendell. When naive, lovestruck Victor (Liberto Rabal) attempts to seduce beautiful and wealthy but strung-out junkie Elena (Francesca Neri), all he gets for his trouble is a one-way, six-year ticket to prison, where he concentrates on strengthening his mind, his body...and his desire for vengeance on the man who put him there. After his release, Victor crosses paths with Elena, who is as beautiful as ever since she cleaned up her act. Still madly in love with her, Victor will stop at nothing to win her over even if it means revenge for Elena has married David (Javier Bardem), the cop who sent him to prison!
ForeignA singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.
ForeignIn the fifth of their immortal collaborations, Federico Fellini and the exquisitely expressive Giulietta Masina completed the creation of one of the most indelible characters in all of cinema: Cabiria, an irrepressible, fiercely independent sex worker who, as she moves through the sea of Rome’s humanity, through adversity and heartbreak, must rely on herself—and her own indomitable spirit—to stay standing. Winner of the best actress prize at Cannes for Masina and the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA brought the early, neorealist-influenced phase of Fellini’s career to a transcendent close with its sublimely heartbreaking yet hopeful final image, which embodies, perhaps more than any other in the director’s body of work, the blend of the bitter and the sweet that define his vision of the world.
ForeignAs a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film's masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime collaborator).
ForeignBased on a true story, this story chronicles the life of Andres Lopez aka "Florecita" who after the killing of Pablo Escobar finds himself in the impossible position of having to go undercover for the DEA or go to the very prison where his mortal enemies wait to kill him. Turning states evidence, Florecita, quickly rising through the ranks of the Colombian Cartel finds himself working both sides of the most dangerous battle known to man.
ForeignAydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities.
ForeignA bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop’s and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog goes beyond crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind.
ForeignTwo rival marathon runners find their dreams of competing in the Tokyo Olympics fading after World War II breaks out and they are forced to serve their country. Jun-shik works on a farm owned by Tatsuo's grandfather. An aspiring Olympian, Jun-shik dreams of the day he will win the gold as a marathon runner. But Tatsuo also wants to be an Olympic runner, and he's determined to be the best. When the bombs start to fall and both men are drafted into service, Tatsuo becomes the leader of Jun-shik's unit and hatches an ambitious plan to get the upper hand over their enemies. Unfortunately his plot fails, and both men are taken prisoner by the Soviets. Subsequently escaping but torn apart by fate, Tatsuo and Jun-shik later cross paths on the beaches of Normandy, just as the Allies prepare to execute Operation Overlord. My Way was the “Audience Award Winner” and the 2012 Dallas International Film Festival and directed by Je-gyu Kang of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.
Foreign15-year-old Mia and her parents move to the suburbs of Zürich. While Mia plunges into a wild teenager existence, her body begins to change oddly. First hardly noticeably, but then with a force that threatens to drive her out of her mind. Mia’s transformation progresses inexorably, and she turns into the being which has slumbered within her for years... and is now gaining the upper hand.
ForeignFor the first time, Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne team up with a major international star, Marion Cotillard, to create a universal story about working-class people living on the edges of society. Sandra (Cotillard) has just returned to work after recovering from a serious bout with depression. Realizing that the company can operate with one fewer employee, management tells Sandra she is to be let go. After learning that her co-workers will vote to decide her fate on Monday morning, Sandra races against time over the course of the weekend, often with the help of her husband, to convince each of her fellow employees to sacrifice their much-needed bonuses so she can keep her job. With each encounter, Sandra is brought into a different world with unexpected results in this powerful statement on community solidarity.
ForeignAdapted from the novel Une vie by Guy de Maupassant, A Woman’s Life is a tale of tormented love embedded in the restrictive social and moral codes of marriage and family in 19th century Normandy. Upon finishing her schooling in a convent, young aristocrat Jeanne (Judith Chemla) marries local Viscount Julien de Lamare (Swann Arlaud), who soon reveals himself to be a miserly and unfaithful husband. As she navigates his chronic infidelity, pressure from her family and community, and the alternating joys and burdens of motherhood, Jeanne’s rosy illusions about her privileged world are slowly stripped away. French filmmaker Stéphane Brizé shoots this follow-up to his Cannes and César Award winner The Measure of a Man in constricted 4:3 Academy ratio, creating a tightly composed work that perfectly translates de Maupassant’s portrayal of life’s indifferences.
Foreign“Visionary” barely begins to describe this masterpiece of Chinese cinema and martial arts moviemaking. A Touch of Zen by King Hu depicts the journey of Yang (Hsu Feng), a fugitive noblewoman who seeks refuge in a remote, and allegedly haunted, village. The sanctuary she finds with a shy scholar and two aides in disguise is shattered when a nefarious swordsman uncovers her identity, pitting the four against legions of blade-wielding opponents. At once a wuxia film, the tale of a spiritual quest, and a study in human nature, A Touch of Zen is an unparalleled work in Hu’s formidable career and an epic of the highest order, characterized by breathtaking action choreography, stunning widescreen landscapes, and innovative editing.
ForeignLoving grandmother Michelle is enjoying a peaceful retirement in Burgundy. When her antagonistic daughter and young grandson come to visit, family ties are tested as Michelle plots a path towards restoring the family life so long denied her. Beneath a deceptively placid surface, master stylist François Ozon cooks up a twisty and destabilizing thriller.
ForeignBased on the best-selling novel of the same name, acclaimed filmmaker Fatih Akin (Head-On, The Edge of Heaven, In The Fade) delivers a gruesome tale of notorious German serial killer Fritz Honka as he haunts Hamburg’s red light district in the 1970s, frequenting his favorite bar of boozy castaways, the “Golden Glove”, and chasing after any lonely woman he might just be able to lure into his attic.
ForeignFor the detective Jack Palmer, finding Ange Leoni to give him documents concerning property he's inherited is just another job, and a straightforward one at that. But it turns out that Leoni lives in Corsica and is a high-ranking member of the independence movement being sought by police. Palmer is convinced that he'll have no trouble carrying out his mission. But shortly after his arrival on the island paradise, he rapidly discovers that nothing happens here the way it does elsewhere. However, he's determined not to give up, but the road that lies ahead is long and tortuous. Traps, insane kidnappings, underhand maneuverings, heroic chases, surprising encounters and explosions abound. Palmer ends up finding Leoni and it's thanks to him that the detective will discover the island's true secrets and a new way of approaching life.
ForeignIn Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-middle-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, their attempts to eat thwarted by vaudevillian events both actual and imagined, including terrorist attacks, military maneuvers, and ghostly apparitions. Stringing together a discontinuous, digressive series of absurdist set pieces, Buñuel and his screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carrière send a cast of European-film greats—including Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Bulle Ogier—through a maze of desire deferred, frustrated, and interrupted. The Oscar-winning pinnacle of Buñuel’s late-career ascent as a feted maestro of the international art house, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is also one of his most gleefully radical assaults on the values of the ruling class.
ForeignOnce-great Spanish matador Nacho Martinez has been reduced to starring in gruesome "snuff" films. Martinez is idolized by Antonio Banderas, who has no notion of his idol's current illegal profession. Terrified at the thought of drawing blood in the bullring, Banderas nevertheless seeks out Martinez' assistance in preparing for a bullfighting career. To prove his "machismo", Banderas rapes Martinez' lady-friend Eva Cobo. No one will believe Banderas' confession of the rape, so he decides to attach more importance to his crime by confessing to a recent rash of serial killings (actually perpetrated by Martinez and his cohorts). Bandera's case is taken by feminist attorney Assumpta Serna, who unwittingly--but not unwillingly--sets herself up as Martinez' next "conquest."
ForeignAdoptive parents Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) and Gastón (Gael García Bernal) are artistic free spirits in an experimental dance troupe whose lives are thrown into chaos when their son Polo is involved in a shocking incident. As her marriage crumbles in the wake of their decision to abandon the child, Ema embarks on an odyssey of liberation and self-discovery as she dances and seduces her way into a daring new life. Centering on the sinuous, electrifying art of reggaeton dance, Ema is an incendiary portrait of an artistic temperament forced to contend with societal pressure and the urge to conform. From world-class director Pablo Larraín (Jackie, Neruda) comes another psychologically acute exhumation of Latin American life featuring an unforgettable heroine who is determined to move freely through the world as she electrifies everyone and everything around her.
ForeignA riveting character study in the guise of a gritty underworld thriller, Jacques Audiard’s international breakthrough is a bold reimagining of a New Hollywood cult classic. Romain Duris delivers an explosive performance as a real-estate broker torn between the dirty dealings of his slumlord father and his recently rekindled love for classical piano. Can music offer salvation from a life of sin?
ForeignIn legendary Chen Village, everyone is a martial arts master, using their powerful Chen Style Tai Chi in all aspects of their lives. Lu Chan has arrived to train, but the villagers are forbidden to teach Chen Style to outsiders, and do their best to discourage him by challenging him to a series of fights. Everyone, from strong men to young children, defeats him using their Tai Chi moves. But when a man from the village’s past returns with a frightening steam-powered machine and plans to build a railroad through the village at any costs, the villagers realize they may have no choice but to put their faith in Lu Chan… who has a secret power of his own.
ForeignLuis Buñuel’s final film brings full circle the director’s lifelong preoccupation with the darker side of desire. Buñuel regular Fernando Rey plays Mathieu, an urbane widower, tortured by his lust for the elusive Conchita. With subversive flair, Buñuel uses two different actors in the latter role—Carole Bouquet, a sophisticated French beauty, and Ángela Molina, a Spanish coquette. Drawn from the surrealist favorite Pierre Louÿs’s classic erotic novel La femme et le pantin (The Woman and the Puppet, 1898), That Obscure Object of Desire is a dizzying game of sexual politics punctuated by a terror that harks back to Buñuel’s avant-garde beginnings.
ForeignSummer in Tangiers. A family comes together for three days in their home following the death of the father to share their memories and to grieve his loss, according to Muslim tradition. They have left the beach behind and swapped swimsuits for djellabas as everyone gathers in a show of mourning. The emotions are further heightened since this man left behind him an entirely female immediate family. Sparks start to fly when Sofia jets in from New York after several years away. The youngest daughter, she made a new life for herself as an actress in America, but she only ever gets roles as the terrorist in US series. Her return provides the opportunity to settle some scores with her sisters, as the order once maintained by the patriarch breaks down. Between laughter and tears, a collective hysteria leads each of the women to face up to some home truths.
ForeignWinner of the Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Goodbye to Language is a triumphant masterpiece from Jean-Luc Godard. The film follows a couple whose relationship breaks down along with the images, which in its second half takes a dog’s-eye view ofthe world. It is a meditation on history and illusion, figures merging and weaving across the screen along with the film’s ideas about romantic love and being-in-the-world. It has the feeling of a final statement, but knowing Godard’s penchant for re-invention, hopefully it is yet another beginning to an extraordinary career.
ForeignIn 1975, Pierre Goldman, a fiery and controversial figure of revolutionary left-wing activism, was put on trial in France. Accused of multiple crimes including two murders, Goldman proclaims his innocence. The Goldman trial reflects the political, ideological and racial tensions that marked the 1970s in France and Europe. Considered to be the trial of the century, it divided an entire country and widened the gap between the conservative right and left-wing intellectuals.
Foreign“Marius” takes place in Marseilles’Old Port, at the La Marine Bar, owned by César and his son Marius. Marius’ biggest dream is to embark on one of the boats passing by his dad’s bar and to set off to a faraway land. Fanny, a young and pretty seafood peddler, has secretly been in love with Marius since her childhood; Marius, never admitting it, has always loved Fanny. One day, a sailor drops by La Marine and offers him a job on an exploratory ship. Trying to hold him off and to make him jealous, Fanny confesses his love to him and provokes a fight between Marius and one of César’s old friends, Panisse, a boat merchant, who despite his old age, has been courting Fanny for a while. Torn between the call of the sea and his love for her, Marius abandons his dream to be with Fanny who gives herself to him. As César and Honorine, Fanny’s mother, are getting ready for the wedding, Marius changes his mind, drawn back to the call of the sea. Sacrificing her love, Fanny convin
ForeignMariangela Melato (Swept Away) stars as Signora Bolk, a self-made tycoon interested in ecological preservation. She is fed up with the terrorists who poach Italy's rich beauty, and as part of a crazy retaliation scheme she hires a former CIA agent to abduct the number one violator, Giuseppe 'Beppe' Catania. Catania is taken to her villa on a private island where he insists that as a man, he cannot go without sex. She relents and hires two prostitutes to pleasure him. Blindfolded and chained, Beppe realizes that the third woman is none other than the woman who kidnapped him and agrees to pay the $100 million but only with a twist.
ForeignAfter the tragic loss of her daughter, Miyabi’s life takes a dark turn as she divorces and begins working as a call girl. A new customer's request for photographs of her body escalates quickly, leading Miyabi to feel the spirit of her daughter with each encounter. As she grapples with her grief and her daughter's presence, Miyabi must decide how far she's willing to go to reconnect with her beloved child.
ForeignThis bittersweet farce from Academy Award®-nominated director Jiang Yimou (Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern) stars Zhao Benshan as Zhao, an aging bachelor who entices his beloved by pretending to be wealthy and agreeing to an expensive wedding. He tries to raise the money by refurbishing an abandoned bus and renting it out by the hour "The Happy Times Hotel" to young couples starved for privacy. Meanwhile, Zhao's fiancee insists that he take her beautiful blind stepdaughter, Wu Ying (Dong Jie), to the Happy Times Hotel and give her a job. Zhao reluctantly agrees, then creates a series of deceptions to keep the girl occupied. As the subterfuge unravels, unexpected truths come to light as a real empathy grows between the young woman and the older man.
ForeignWith MASCULIN FÉMININ, ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola," through a gang of restless youths engaged in hopeless love affairs with music, revolution, and one another. French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Paul, an idealistic would-be intellectual struggling to forge a relationship with the adorable pop star Madeleine (real-life yé-yé girl Chantal Goya). Through their tempestuous affair, Godard fashions a candid and wildly funny free-form examination of youth culture in pulsating 1960s Paris, mixing satire and tragedy as only Godard can.
ForeignIf you could choose only one memory to hold on to for eternity, what would it be? That’s the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s revelatory international breakthrough, a bittersweet fantasia in which the recently deceased find themselves in a limbo realm where they must select a single cherished moment from their life to be recreated on film for them to take into the next world. AFTER LIFE’s high-concept premise is grounded in Kore‑eda’s documentary-like approach to the material, which he shaped through interviews with hundreds of Japanese citizens. What emerges is a panoramic vision of the human experience — its ephemeral joys and lingering regrets — and a quietly profound meditation on memory, our interconnectedness, and the amberlike power of cinema to freeze time.
ForeignParis, 1967. Disillusioned by their suburban lifestyles, a group of middle-class students, led by Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), form a small Maoist cell and plan to change the world by any means necessary. After studying the growth of communism in China, the students decide they must use terrorism and violence to ignite their own revolution. Director Jean-Luc Godard, whose advocacy of Maoism bordered on intoxication, infuriated many traditionalist critics with this swiftly paced satire.
ForeignPanah Panahi, son and collaborator of embattled filmmaker Jafar Panahi and apprentice to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and deeply moving comic drama. 'Hit the Road' takes the tradition of the Iranian road-trip movie and adds unexpected twists and turns. It follows a family of four – two middle-aged parents and their sons, one a taciturn adult, the other an ebullient six-year-old – as they drive across the Iranian countryside. Over the course of the trip, they bond over memories of the past, grapple with fears of the unknown, and fuss over their sick dog. Unspoken tensions arise and the film builds emotional momentum as it slowly reveals the furtive purpose for their journey. The result is a humanist drama that offers an authentic, often comedic, and deeply sincere observation of an Iranian family preparing to part with one of their own.
ForeignXavier Giannoli’s sumptuous adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s epic novel, Lost Illusions is a ravishing vision of the birth of modern media. Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin) is an ambitious and unknown aspiring poet in 19th century France. He leaves his provincial town, arriving in Paris on the arm of his admirer, Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France). Outmatched in elite circles, Lucien’s naive etiquette prompts Louise to retreat back to her husband, leaving the young poet to forge a new path. Lucien makes a new friend in another young writer, Etienne Lousteau (Vincent Lacoste), who introduces him to the business of journalism where a salon of wordsmiths and wunderkinds make or break the reputations of actors and artists with insouciant impunity. Lucien agrees to write rave reviews for bribes, achieving material success at the expense of his conscience and soon discovers that the written word can be an instrument of both beauty and deceit.
ForeignTae-suk drifts around on his motorcycle looking for empty houses to stay in until the vacationing owners return. He never steals or ruins anything, in fact spends his time fixing broken items as a form of rent. One day, Tae-suk meets his destiny; a married woman named Sun-hwa. When Tae-suk breaks in, Sun-hwa hides in the dark and silently watches him. When she sees him fixing a broken scale, she realizes he is not a thief and continues to observe him from the shadows. When Sun-hwa's husband comes home and abuses her, Tae-suk grabs a 3-iron and swings it at golf balls, which strike her husband. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa run away and live in empty homes together until one day when they find a dead body!
ForeignThis is the story of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, who begins her life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey becomes the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style.
ForeignAfter the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache. In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.
ForeignThe great Agnès Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple (played by Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret) and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French New Wave.
ForeignA tattoo artist and a musician fall in love at first sight in this intensely romantic portrait of a relationship from beginning to end, set to an electrifying bluegrass score.
ForeignWhen a legendary but self-destructive jockey is thrown from the saddle during a big race, he ends up in the hospital. Hunted by his mobster boss, who wants him found dead or alive, he flees under a new identity in this surreal crime comedy.
ForeignSexual tension spills off the screen in this sweaty, titillating bromance from award-winning director Marco Berger (Absent, Plan B, Sexual Tension: Volatile). Hawaii follows Martín and Eugenio (Manuel Vignau and Mateo Chiarino), two former childhood friends who reunite during a hot summer in the Argentinean countryside. As they work together to restore Eugenio’s summer home, a game of power and desire ensues–forcing the two buddies to grapple with their sexual attraction and reconsider their relationship. With gorgeous cinematography, a lush setting and compelling lead performances, Hawaii is an intimate character study that pushes past social boundaries.
Foreign"The Flower of My Secret" is the new film from Pedro Almodovar, Spanish director of such avant garde hits as "Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" and High Heels. Leo (Marisa Paredes) is a bestselling author of romantic fiction, but has been writing under a pseudonym name for years. Now in the middle of her life, Leo has reached a creative and emotional crisis. Tired of producing popular fiction when her heart yearns to write truly great literature, her very success has become a burden to her; unable to accept that her marriage to Paco (Imanol Arias) is rapidly disintegrating, Leo finds herself at a crossroads in her life. Even Leo's mother and sister can offer no consolation as they constantly bicker with one another. The one ray of hope in Leo's life comes from Angel (Juan Echanove), the editor of the newspaper El Pais, who offers her a job as a critic for a national arts supplement. Leo's first assignment brings her face to face with her alter-ego causing an examination of her
ForeignIn THE QUEEN OF SPAIN, Penelope Cruz is the famous movie star Macarena Granada, who flees the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood to return to her roots in Spain where she has signed on to star in an epic film as Queen Isabella of Spain.
ForeignFrom the director of the hit comedy, THE WOMEN ON THE 6TH FLOOR comes BICYCLING WITH MOLIÈRE - a warm, funny, literate comedy starring renowned French actors, Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson. Gauthier (Wilson) is a handsome and famous soap opera star in Paris; Serge (Luchini) is a serious stage actor who has renounced his profession to live on an idyllic island off the French coast. When Gauthier visits Serge to convince him to join him in a production of Molière's The Misanthrope, a battle of wits ensues over who will play the lead role of Alceste. Between rehearsals, the two bike along the windswept beaches, rival for the affections of a beautiful Italian divorcée and offer advice to an aspiring porn actress. As tensions mount, Gauthier begins to wonder if Serge is really considering leaving his island paradise for the stage or if he's just toying with him.
ForeignOn one side is Roger Borniche, a different kind of cop who has gangsters writing him to thank him for his kindness and who never carries a gun. On the other side, Emile Buisson, a killer who has no compunctions about rubbing out his own accomplices. Between them, a dizzying fight to the finish.
ForeignA group of high school students are forced into a game where they are hypnotized to commit suicide on an unknown command. Where no one is safe from a sudden death, how can they avoid their fates?
ForeignBurning with passion, poetry, and a nation’s fervent spirit of resistance, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s stirring revolutionary epic vividly dramatizes the pivotal decades leading up to Algeria’s War of Independence through the harrowing saga of Ahmed (Yorgo Voyagis), a proud farmer seeking a dignified life, whose experience of brutal oppression and systemic injustice leads him, like so many others, to take a stand against the seemingly indomitable might of French colonialism. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, this awe-inspiring landmark of Arab cinema is an at once personal and expansive vision of a country awakening from despair to build an unbreakable movement of liberation.
ForeignPresented for the 1st time in a superb, wide screen, anamorphic version, showcasing Brass’ luscious photography and carefully choreographed set-pieces and showing off the spectacular, titanically proportioned, Serena Grandi, whose completely uninhibited, gleeful naturalness perfectly embodies the Miranda character, and permitted Brass to push explicit eroticism to the doors of hardcore. Based on the Carlo Goldoni play, Serena Grandi is Miranda the landlady of a “taverna” who must choose between the many men who wish to conquer and tame her.. She lustfully juggles her lovers: a rich politician, a local gigolo and an American GI, while taking malicious pleasure in tormenting her own innkeeper … until her search for love is rewarded – and so is the chosen man!
ForeignThe lush and breathtaking beauty of the Alps, filmed with painterly grace under natural light from frigid winter to redemptive spring, provides the physical and emotional backdrop for VERMIGLIO, Maura Delpero’s visionary film, which won the Silver Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. This singular portrait of a sprawling family, set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, follows a series of dramatic, consequential events after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier (Giuseppe De Domenico), who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with the family's eldest daughter, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi). VERMIGLIO shows the lives of a provincial family in a remote village suspended in time by the customs of a fading era. Conjuring stories from her own family’s past, Delpero creates a deeply personal and human tale that recalls the great neorealist movement in Italian cinema, but through Lucia’s perspe
ForeignSmall-time swindler Marcos (Ricardo Darín) observes Juan (Gastón Pauls) pulling off a scam on a cashier, and then getting caught as he attempts the same trick again. Claiming to be a policeman, Marcos drags Juan out of the store, then reveals himself to be a fellow grifter with a higher stakes game in mind, and invites Juan to be his partner. When an old time con-man enlists them to sell a forged set of extremely valuable rare stamps,"The Nine Queens," the tricky negotiations that ensue introduce a cast of suspicious characters including Marcos' beautiful sister Valeria (Leticia Brédice) and their innocent younger brother Federico (Tomás Fonzi). As the deceptions and duplicity mount, a slew of thieves and con artists make it difficult to figure out who is conning whom.
ForeignIn the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, Takumi and his daughter, Hana, lead a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for the local udon restaurant. Increasingly, the townsfolk become aware of a talent agency’s plan to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to the snowy wilderness. When two company representatives arrive and ask for local guidance, Takumi becomes conflicted in his involvement, as it becomes clear that the project will have a pernicious impact on the community. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to his Academy Award®-winning DRIVE MY CAR is a foreboding fable on humanity's mysterious, mystical relationship with nature. As sinister gunshots echo from the forest, both the locals and representatives confront their life choices and the haunting consequences they have.
ForeignA new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.
ForeignOn January 3, 1889 in Turin, Italy, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, a cab driver is having trouble with a stubborn horse. The horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. After this, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan, until he loses consciousness and his mind. Somewhere in the countryside, the driver of the cab lives with his daughter and the horse. Outside, a windstorm rages. Immaculately photographed in Tarr’s renowned long takes, The Turin Horse is the final statement from a master filmmaker.
ForeignAfter being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents' actions and the reality of the new world in which they find themselves. When the group encounters the mysterious Thomas, a Jewish refugee, Lore finds herself torn by conflicting emotions - her innate contempt for his kind and her burgeoning sexual desire. Lyrical, haunting, and unforgettable, Lore is a strikingly unique coming-of-age tale and an unforgettable look at the human legacy of the holocaust.
ForeignOne of six sublime color masterworks that Yasujiro Ozu produced late in his career, the director’s second filming of his own 1934 silent triumph A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS represents the mature flowering of his style. Harnessing the full expressive potential of color, sound, music, and his exquisite compositional sense, he brings new depths of bittersweet feeling—tinged with an aging artist’s melancholic nostalgia—as well as a new air of expansiveness, to a story with enduring resonance.
