No tengas miedo (2011)

No tengas miedo 

Director: Montxo Armendáriz
Country: Spain
89mins











In "Fear not," Silvia is a young marked by a dark childhood. At just 25 years decides to rebuild her life and deal with people, feelings and emotions that keep you tied to the past. And in their struggle against adversity, against itself, you will learn to control their fears and become an adult woman, mistress of her actions.

The Jewel (2011)

The Jewel

 Director: Andrea Molaioli
Country: Italy
Runtime: 110 min













The dramatic reconstruction of a financial scandal involving a major food processing company (inspired by the actual case of the dairy giant Parmalat) run by prominent entrepreneur Rastelli and his trusted accountant Botta.

Pina (2011)

Pina (2011)

Directed by: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany, France, UK
Runtime: 106 min




Pina is an essay on the life and work of renowned choreographer Pina Bausch. Pina appears in some archival footage, and several members of her dance troupe testify to her ingenuity and artistic inspiration. The spirit of Pina, however, lives on in her dances: the film offers four of Bausch’s famed dances in their entirety, but dispersed and intercut throughout the film. The opening dance, The Rite of Spring, is a mesmerizing and penetrating ballet through a field of earth. The film’s hindrance may be that the first number is the strongest, but all four dances are sharp and provocative, and they alternate between soundstages and exterior settings.
Aside from moving the dances outdoors, Wenders transcends the theatrical boundaries of Pina’s stage and offers a wholly cinematic rendering of her dances by shooting them in marvelous 3D.

Habemus Papam (2011)

Habemus Papam (2011)

Director: Nanni Moretti
Country: Italy | France 
Runtime:102 min 










 After the death of the Pope, the conclave met to elect his successor. Many votes are needed before the white smoke rises.Finally he chose a cardinal! But the faithful who have gathered in St. Peter's Square waiting in vain for the appearance on the balcony of the new pontiff. The latter does not seem prepared to support the weight of this responsibility. Is it anxiety? Depression? Fear of not living up? The whole world will soon be prey to anxiety, while at the Vatican, seeking solutions to overcome the crisis ...

The Tree Of Life (2011)

The Tree Of Life (2011)

Director: Terrence Malick
Country: USA
Runtime: 139min


The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.


An IMDb Review: Haunting
Unlike a novel the stories in this movie do not unfold, revelation following revelation, culminating in a definable message or theme. There is no moral, no hero, no emotional epiphanies. What it presents is an extraordinarily haunting vision of childhood, how the things we love the most are as fragile as morning dew yet immensely powerful. The things that connect us, separate us, and bewilder us - again and again and again throughout our lives. The saddest, most insightful, most poignant portrayal of a family I have ever seen. Genius. How can this film achieve commercial success? it seems impossible. How did a film so ambitious get made when everything that makes money today is everything this film isn't? Bravo to the producers, bravo to the early critics who are stepping up and speaking out for this deeply moving masterpiece.

The Kid with a Bike (2011)

The Kid with a Bike (2011)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne,Luc Dardenne
Writers: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Italy
Language: French
Plot Outline: Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider. 
Runtime: 87 min .




Cyril, almost 12, has only one plan: to find the father who left him temporarily in a children's home.
By chance he meets Samantha, who runs a hairdressing salon and agrees to let him stay with her at weekends.
Cyril doesn't recognize the love Samantha feels for him, a love he desperately needs to calm his rage.

A Separation (2011)

A Separation

Director:Asghar Farhadi

Country:Iran

Runtime:120min

 

The film is about to divorce, child custody, but tells the story of a couple falling in the dilemma ...

Simin, wants to leave Iran with her ​​husband, Nader and his daughter Termeh'le. Nader refuses to quit over the divorce case of Alzheimer's disease, which his father, Simin, the case goes to the house of his parents rejected the request.

Termeh the father decided to stay. Nader and his father to look after her daughter keeps a pregnant young woman, but this situation will lead to more problems ...

The Indian Woman: A Historical Sketch (1975)

The Indian Woman: A Historical Sketch (1975)

Director.........: Mani Kaul
Country..........: India




Mani Kaul's superior documentary on the plight of Indian women made at the height of the emergency in 1975. Kaul refused to sign the film after Indira Gandhi asked him to make some changes.

The Reconstruction / Hashikhzur (1994)

The Reconstruction / Hashikhzur (1994)

Director.........: Avi Mograbi
Country..........: Israel





On December 8, 1983 a fifteen year old Jewish boy from the city of Haifa was kidnapped, murdered and sexually abused after his death. Five Arabs who worked in in the neighborhood’s supermarket were convicted and imprisoned for life and 27 years. The conviction was based only on the defendants’ confessions and reconstructions. Seventeen years after their conviction, the five defendants still claim they are innocent. THE RECONSTRUCTION follows the police investigation and juridical process step by step. The heart of the film is the original videotaped reconstructions of the murder performed by the defendants in which they admit their guilt. Presented also is a secretly recorded audio tape made by the police during the investigation in which one of the defendants begs his alibi witness to withdraw his favorable testimony. Introducing a surprising new evidence by former Head of Investigations in The Israeli Security Service as to the defendants’ state during the investigation and a pathological analysis of the original death certificate in relation to the defendants’ reconstructions - the film raises doubts as to whether the five have at all taken part in the murder and as to the ability to ever learn the truth, concerning a specific event and in general.

Oxen (1991) aka The Ox

Oxen

Director: Sven Nykvist
Country: Sweden
Runtime: 92 min



Based on a true story during a famine in nineteenth century Sweden, this deeply moral story is played by the royalty of Scandinavian film and theater (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson). Helge (Stellan Skarsgard) and his wife Elfrida (Ewa Froling) live on the farmland of their master Svenning (Lennart Hjulstrom). They have no food for the winter. Helge decides to kill one of his employer's two oxen to save his wife and infant daughter from starvation. Should Helge be caught, he'll suffer severe punishment. With the help of appalled wife, Helge carves up the meat and hides it.

"Ox" shows the excruciating consequences Helge, his wife and their baby daughter will have to undergo.

Director Sven Nykvist, best known as Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer, has no problem conveying the surface grimness of the situation.
 

Son of Babylon (2009)

Son of Babylon (2009)

 Director:Mohamed Al Daradji
Country: Iraq
Runtime: 182 min.









A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.

A Pestering Journey(2010)

A Pestering Journey
Directed By: K R Manoj
Written by Ranjini Krishnan
K.R. Manoj
Cinematography Shehnad Jalal
Running time 66 minutes
Country:India

A voyage through two pesticide tragedies in post Independent India,
A Pestering Journey is an attempt to interrogate the legitimate forms and technologies of killing available in a culture. Taking a pestering turn, the journey blurs the boundaries of nature and culture, of self and other, of life and death and many other comfortable binaries we inhabit. It tries to ask how much regard for life a culture should have to ponder over the question, what a pest is.

Pestering Journey unravels the many interwoven layers of culture and agriculture and foregrounds the logic of green revolution. In an atypical move it challenges and changes the idioms of pesticide and genocide and reveals the claims over knowledge and expertise which pushes a pesticide like Endosulfan to a dubious position between poison and medicine.

Farewell to the Ark(1984)

Farewell to the Ark(1984)
Director: Shuji Terayama
Writers:Gabriel García Márquez (novel)
Country: Japan
Runtime: 127 min


There is a legend that the married couple who also are cousins have a tailed child at this village. Sutekichi and Sue are cousins, and they marry against the kinsfolk. But Sue wears the chasity band, so they can't making love. One day, Sutekichi kills Daisaku who is a relative at a cockpit. After then, Daisaku's ghost appears and Sutekichi is losing 'the words' of everything.

In a tale that is visually stunning in certain segments, director Shuji Terayama (who died before this movie was released) has woven a spell of magic and social reprobation around the forbidden love of two cousins. Su-e (Mayumi Ogawa) and her cousin Sutekichi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a descendant of one of the village clans, live together but have been forbidden by her father to have sexual contact. Like other villagers, he believes that if cousins have children together, the children will suffer serious birth defects. His remedy is to make Su-e wear a large, ugly chastity belt. Unable to take the ridicule of his fellow villagers, Sutekichi stabs the head of the clan to death and then runs away with Su-e. After some time elapses, the two make their way back to the village, but by then Sutekichi is suffering the effects of his actions.