Just the Wind (2012)

Just the Wind (2012)

Director: Benedek Fliegauf
Country: Hungary
Runtime: 86 min

Benedek Fliegauf's hard-hitting Hungarian drama Just the Wind (Csak a szél, 2011) is a chilling story of a Romany community living amongst an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, that will certainly find itself fighting amongst the best of the Berlinale for its prestigious Golden Bear award.

A recent spate of murders has left the Hungarian gypsy community that lone mother Mari (Katalin Toldi) lives within in a state of justifiable panic. Nobody knows who committed these crimes, yet it remains clear that its perpetrators are trying to send out a message. She fears for the well being of her two children and their grandfather - working two jobs a day in order to raise enough money for them to join her husband in Canada. Her children attend the local school but the recent murder of a Romany family, who both worked and sent their children to be educated nearby, shows that these recent hate crimes aren't just aimed at those traveling families who choose not to contribute to society. The heightened sense of terror surrounding these racist attacks has a dramatic effect on the family, with every sound and unusual occurrence culminating in a suffocating sense of trepidation.
Based on tragic real life events, Just the Wind is a drama which focuses on the harrowing effects of these hate crimes without ever attempting to make a misguided social political statement - a fact made clear by all of its ethnic groups being portrayed through the same unapologetic light. However, despite its aim to remain purely a dramatisation it's powerful approach does raise some important issues regarding this often overlooked form of racism.

Director Fliegauf presents his central characters almost like ghosts, observing them as they go about their lives and revealing how invisible they appear to the world which surrounds them - emphasising their ethnic groups neglected social status. Fliegauf allows the camera to cling to his protagonists, imprisoning the audience in their insular community and installing in the viewer an artificial fear of the world which surrounds them, suitably mirroring Mari and her family's own sense of heightened paranoia - an element only amplified by the film's ominous score which installs a palpable sense of foreboding doom.

Steadily building to a nerve shattering conclusion, Just the Wind is a pressure cooker of social criticism which deceptively hooks you early on, before slowly reeling you in for the kill.

Marx Reloaded (2011)

Marx Reloaded (2011)

Director: Jason Barker
Country: Germany
Runtime:52 min

"Marx Reloaded" is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008—09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today the full implications of the crisis in Europe and around the world still remain unclear. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life?


Today a new generation of philosophers, artists and political activists are returning to Marx's ideas in order to try to make sense of the crisis and to consider whether a world without or beyond capitalism is possible. Is the severity of the ongoing recession a sign that the capitalist system's days are numbered? Ironically, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, could it be that communism might provide the solution to the growing economic and environmental challenges facing the planet?


Written and directed by Jason Barker – himself an experienced writer, lecturer, translator and doctor of philosophy – "Marx Reloaded" comprises interviews with leading thinkers on Marxism, including those at the forefront of a popular revival in Marxist and communist ideas. The film also includes interviews with leading skeptics of this revival as well as light-hearted animation sequences which follow Marx's adventures through the matrix of his own ideas.



Interviews with leading experts include: Norbert Bolz, Micha Brumlik, John Gray, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Nina Power, Jacques Rancière, Peter Sloterdijk, Alberto Toscano, Slavoj Zizek.

Road North (2012)

Road North (2012)

Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Country: Finland
Duration : 1h 53mn






A sly riff on the Prodigal Son story, Mika Kaurismaki's latest — about a joyless workaholic concert pianist who ends up on a wild ride with his long-lost rapscallion father — is a funny and cogent analysis of machismo, abandonment issues and the value of reconnecting with one's roots.

7 Days in Havana (2012)

7 Days in Havana (2012)

Directed by Laurent Cantet,Benicio Del Toro,Julio Medem,Elia Suleiman,Juan Carlos Tabío,Pablo Trapero,Gaspar Noé
Country:France | Spain
Runtime: 129 min

7 Days in Havana is a snapshot of Havana in 2011: a contemporary portrait of this eclectic city, vital and forward-looking, told through a single feature-length movie made of 7 chapters, directed by 7 internationally acclaimed directors.

Each chapter depicts a day of the week through the daily – and extraordinary – lives of its characters. A world away from the familiar touristic clichés, 7 Days in Havana aims to express the soul of this city and its diverse neighborhoods, atmospheres, generations and cultures, in touching, entertaining and funny style.

Seven directors (one from Cuba, six from other countries) share a common purpose: to capture, through their different sensibilities, origins and cinematographic styles, the energy and vitality that make Havana unique. Some have chosen to see the city through foreign eyes; others have preferred a deeper immersion and drawn inspiration from local people.

All seven stories have independent plots, but the many connections between them help to create a powerful dramatic unity. Shared locations play their part: emblematic Havana landmarks like the beach or the Hotel Nacional form the backdrop for some of the chapters. Several characters appear in more than one story – a protagonist in one chapter plays a secondary role in another – subtly connecting the stories and demonstrating that in Havana all social spheres run parallel, intertwine and intersect at various times of the week

Alms for a Blind Horse (2011)

Alms for a Blind Horse (2011)

Director: Gurvinder Singh
Country: India
Duration : 1h 53mn

Anhe Ghore Da Daan (English: Alms for a Blind Horse) is a 2011 Punjabi-language film. The film is based on the Punjabi novel of the same title published in 1976 by Gurdial Singh. It portrays the plight and problems of Indian farmers as well as the landlords. The film won National Awards for Best Direction, Cinematography and Best Feature Film in Punjabi at the 59th National Film Awards of India.



On a foggy winter morning, a Dalit family in a village in Punjab wakes up to the news of the demolition of a house of one of their community members on the outskirts of the village. Father, a silent sympathiser, joins his community in demand for justice for the affected family. The same day, his son Melu, a cycle-rickshaw puller in the city, is participating in a strike by his union. Injured and alienated, Melu spends the day quietly resting and later joins his friends as they tease him over his state of affairs. Hesitantly, he drinks with them in the night as they debate the meaning of their existence. Cycling through the city streets, Melu feels lost and wonders where to go and what to do. Back in the village, his mother feels humiliated at the treatment meted out by the landlords in whose fields she works. Gunshots are heard in the night and the village is tense. It's the night of the lunar eclipse. A man wanders asking for the traditional alms while Father decides to visit the city with a friend, even as his daughter Dayalo walks through the village streets in the night.

L (2012)

L (2012)

Director: Babis Makridis
Country: Greece
Duration : 1h 23mn




A man lives in his car.He is 40 years old and although he does not have a lot of free time, when he has, he chooses to spend it with his family. He meets his wife and two children at a specified day and time in car parking lots. His job is to locate and bring the finest honey to a 50-year old man. A new driver shows up and the man gets fired. Disappointed, he decides to leave his car behind. The man's life changes, and he finds it absurd that no one trusts him anymore.

Mekong Hotel (2012)

Mekong Hotel (2012)

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Country: Thailand
Duration : 56mn 24s









Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter...

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012)

Director: Alison Klayman
Country: USA
Runtime: 91 min

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the first feature-length film about the internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei. In recent years, Ai has garnered international attention as much for his ambitious artwork as his political provocations. AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY examines this complex intersection of artistic practice and social activism as seen through the life and art of China's preeminent contemporary artist. From 2008 to 2010, Beijing-based journalist and filmmaker Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai Weiwei. Klayman documented Ai's artistic process in preparation for major museum exhibitions, his intimate exchanges with family members and his increasingly public clashes with the Chinese government. Klayman's detailed portrait of the artist provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

Unfair World (2011)

Unfair World (2011)

Director: Filippos Tsitos
Country: Greece
Duration : 1h 47mn



Sotiris is a police interrogator in Athens. He has an obsession: he needs to be fair. He judges the suspects after his personal moral and against the law.
With the intention to save another innocent soul, he accidentally kills a man.
Dora is the only witness to the crime. She is a poor cleaning woman who leads a breathless life. The struggle to survive has made her unfair.
The righteous Sotiris and the unrighteous Dora like each other.
But love, honesty and justice aren’t easy to combine.

Camion (2012)

Camion (2012)

Director: Rafaël Ouellet
Country: Canada
Runtime: 95 min

Truck driving is all sixty-year-old widower Germain (Julien Poulin) has ever known. When he is involved in a head-on collision that leaves a woman dead, his quiet life is suddenly thrown into a tailspin. Though he was not at fault, the remorse he experiences is debilitating, leaving him severely depressed and unwilling to get behind the wheel again.

Deeply concerned for his father, Germain’s son Samuel (Patrice Dubois) puts his job in Montreal on hold, travels to New Brunswick to collect his estranged older brother Alain (Stéphane Breton), and together they drive to their rural Quebec hometown to care for their stricken father. The brothers, however, have their own issues: reliable Samuel is still lovelorn decades after a teenage breakup, while Alain, an inveterate raconteur and incurable womanizer, drifts aimlessly from town to town, incapable of settling down.

As the men struggle to reconnect, it becomes apparent that all three are stuck in the past for different reasons, unable to move forward. Slowly, the brothers revive Germain’s will to live, and in the process discover fresh directions for their own lives.

Nuit #1 (2011)

Nuit #1 (2011)

Director: Anne Émond
Country: Canada
Runtime: 91 min

Anne Émond’s dazzling debut feature is a bold and intimate study of a one-night stand. Clara and Nikolai meet at a sweat-soaked rave and end their night at his apartment. The first part of the film is an erotic and candid portrait of their lovemaking: we witness the mystery, sensuality and awkwardness of that first encounter. They know very little about each other, and we know very little about them.

When Nikolai catches Clara trying to sneak out without saying goodbye, this typical hookup takes an unexpected turn. The two strangers, now sober and clothed, begin to talk. Nikolai is coolly frank, criticizing modern women like Clara, whom he claims behave like men. She seems to be a disheartened romantic, sharing what she hoped Nikolai would have said to convince her to stay.

They continue to talk until dawn, often in uninterrupted, brutally honest monologues. Clara and Nikolai learn as much about each other in a few hours as some learn over the course of a long-term relationship. The power struggles of a couple play out, almost dance-like, in this one night. Most remarkable are the astonishing insights they make about their lives as they both venture willingly into the darkest parts of themselves. Our impressions of Clara and Nikolai change many times throughout the course of the film.

Set almost entirely in Nikolai’s unadorned apartment, Nuit #1 focuses closely on the two captivating lead actors, the camera scrutinizing their faces and small, nuanced gestures. Émond has deftly combined spare but elegant form with maximum impact, and the themes she developed in her fine short films flourish on a larger scale in this sharply perceptive first feature. In a world of technology-mediated contact and fleeting encounters, Nuit #1 is a cathartic chamber piece about two modern young people who dare to go much further.

Granny's Funeral (2012)

Granny's Funeral (2012)

Director: Bruno Podalydès
Country: France
Duration : 1h 35mn






Granny is dead. Berthe is no more. Armand’s grandmother had sort of slipped his mind… Armand runs a pharmacy in the Paris suburbs with his wife, Helene. In a medicine cabinet he hides his magical equipment – he’s secretly preparing a show for the daughter… of his lover, Alix. And Granny? Should she be buried or cremated? Who was Berthe?

White Tiger (2012)

White Tiger (2012)

Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Country: Russia
Duration : 1h 48mn



 Unusual Russian war movie about WWII tank battles with fictional, mistical and religous elements.
Karen Shavnazarov shows us a different side of "Soviet era war films". Not straightly patriotic, with no heroes, "politruks", shouting hurrahs... The film is about war itself, it's more philosophical film about tragedy of war and God. I would say, it's like David Lynch shot a film about WWII. Mystical and tragic story for me The story is about tank driver, Ivan, who was severely burnt in a fight, but divinely survived. Set in a latest war days, somewhere in a Hungarian borderlines. He's regarded as a lieutenant for a command of a newly built tank T-34-85 to fight a mysterious "White Tiger" tank.

Can (2011)

Director: Rasit Çelikezer
Country: Turkey
Duration : 1h 42mn 

After eloping to Istanbul to escape the objections of their families, Cemal (Serdar Orcin) and Ayse (Selen Uçer) are happy in their marriage. The only thing missing in their lives is the baby they would both like to have. Unable to get pregnant, they eventually consult a doctor, who reveals to Cemal that he’s infertile. Frustrated and ashamed, he embarks on a face-saving scheme to have Ayse fake a pregnancy, while they adopt a baby who will arrive nine months later. But when the baby does arrive, under dubious circumstances, Ayse finds herself unable to summon any maternal feeling whatsoever. As she and Cemal grow increasingly resentful of one another, the marriage begins to crumble under the strain and, appalled at the mess he’s made, Cemal flees. In this 2012 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner, set against the backdrop of a city with a thriving market in the human trafficking of children, director Rasit Çelikezer has created a complex and surprising exploration of what it means to be a parent.

 

Maternity Blues (2011)

Maternity Blues (2011)

Director:Fabrizio Cattani
Country: Italy
Duration : 1h 34mn






Four different women, but bound by a common guilt: infanticide. Inside a judicial psychiatric hospital, they spend their time expiating a sentence which is mainly internal: the sense of guilt for a gesture that has made useless their existence. From their being forced to live together, new friendships are born, and everyone can read the guilt inside the others. From the confessions is born a comfort that does not completely succeed in alleviating the suffering.

Nero's Guests (2009)

Nero's Guests (2009)

Director: Deepa Bhatia
Country: India
Runtime:55 min




Nearly 2,00,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this. Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

Tabu (2012)

Tabu (2012)

Director: Miguel Gomes
Country: Portugal
Runtime: 118 min

Acclaimed director Miguel Gomes returns with a sumptuous, eccentric two-part tale centered on Aurora, shown first as an impulsive, cantankerous elderly woman in present-day Lisbon. When Aurora is hospitalized, she sends her neighbor, Pilar, to pass word of her grave condition to Gian Luca, a man of which no one has ever heard her speak. Pilar's quest to fulfill her friend's wish transports us to Africa fifty years earlier, before the start of the Portuguese Colonial War. We see Aurora again,  this time as the gorgeous, smoldering wife of a wealthy young farmer, involved in a forbidden love affair with Gian Luca, her husband's best friend. Their moving, poetic tale is conveyed through the older Gian Luca's suave voiceover, combined with the lush, melodious sounds of its heady, tropical setting, peppered with a soundtrack of Phil Spector songs.

Amour(2012)

Amour(2012)

Director: Michael Haneke
Country: Austria | France | Germany
Runtime: 121 min.

Cinema feeds on stories of love and death, but how often do filmmakers really offer new or challenging perspectives on either? Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour’ is devastatingly original and unflinching in the way it examines the effect of love on death, and vice versa. It’s a staggering, intensely moving look at old age and life’s end, which at its heart offers two performances of incredible skill and wisdom from French veteran actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

The Austrian director of ‘Hidden’ and ‘The White Ribbon’ offers an intimate, brave and devastating portrait of an elderly Parisian couple, Anne (Riva) and Georges (Trintignant), facing up to a sudden turn in their lives. Haneke erects four walls to keep out the rest of the world, containing his drama almost entirely within one apartment over some weeks and months. The only place we see this couple outside their flat, right at the start, is at the theatre, framed from the stage. Haneke reverses the perspective for the rest of the film. The couple’s flat becomes a theatre for their stories: past, present and future.

He asks hard questions: what do love and companionship mean when one half of a couple is facing the end? How can we cope? What’s the right way to behave? Can anyone else understand what you’re going through? Is life always worth living? What role, if any, do kindness and compassion play? And what do those words even mean in extreme circumstances?

A winter light and a sense of half-dark, fading afternoons pervade the film. Our only glimpses of the outdoors are seen through the windows of the flat. This is a drama played out under grey clouds. There’s no storm, just gradual changes from one day, week or month to the next. There are hints of threats from the outside. The film opens with a door being broken down; the lock is damaged in an attempted burglary. And Georges dreams of being attacked outside in a flooded corridor. But these are reminders that the real threat is from within: lives are changing, and so too are the meanings of love, intimacy and kindness.

Haneke rejects the idea of death as a communal experience and presents the slow act of dying as intensely isolating. Georges and Anne’s daughter (Isabelle Huppert) and son-in-law (William Shimell) come to visit, but their own feelings and experiences are less and less connected to what’s happening in this apartment. Death creates a fortress, and it feels piercingly true.

Haneke presents the stark realities of sickness – problems of washing, mobility, going to the toilet – but his aim is not solely to present a realistic portrait of the end. More than that, he wants to explore the emotions and instincts felt by this couple – pride, despair, impending loss, empathy and its limits. There are strong feelings at play, but there’s also an intense pragmatism afoot. Georges has made a pledge to Anne: ‘Please never take me back to the hospital… Promise… Promise me.’ Among so many other things, this is a film about loyalty and being true to your word. ‘Amour’ is a staggering, highly intelligent and astonishingly performed work. It’s a masterpiece.

First Man (2011)

First Man (2011)

Director: Gianni Amelio
Country:  Italy | France | Algeria
Runtime: 102 min






Based on a novel that Albert Camus was working on when he died, we follow Jacques Comery as he travels back to Algeria in 1957, a place full of childhood memories. The country is split between those wanting to remain a part of France, and those demanding independence. Reminiscences of his mother, his stern grandmother and a young Arab boy come flooding back.

War Witch (2012)

War Witch (2012)

Director:Kim Nguyen
Country: Canada
Runtime: 90 min

Writer/director Kim Nguyen highlights the tragic plight of child soldiers in sub-Saharan Africa with this tale of a pregnant 14 year old girl recalling the time she was forced to kill her own parents and join the rebel army. Komona was just 12 when the rebels ransacked her village, and ordered her to slay her parents. Subsequently taken to the rebel camp and given an AK 47, Komona was beaten mercilessly by the rebel leader for showing weakness, and became the supreme leader's war witch after emerging the sole survivor in a bloody battle against the government army. Amidst all of this darkness, the one light in Komona's life is Magician, a 15 year old boy who shows her compassion in a world of cruelty. For a brief moment, it appears as if Komona and Magician have escaped the war, but their greatest battle has yet to be fought. Later, pregnant and haunted by the ghosts of her parents, Komona embarks on a trip back to her birthplace to make amends with her past, and ensure that her unborn child has a chance to live a life free from the sins of the mother. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Laurence Anyways (2012)

Laurence Anyways (2012)

Director: Xavier Dolan
Country: Canada | France
Runtime: 2 hours, 48 minutes





Laurence, a young french teacher and soon-to-be-published author, enjoys an intense and mutually loving relationship with his fiancé, Fred. But on the day after his 30th birthday, Laurence confesses to Fred that he longs to become a woman, asking her to support him in this transformation. Despite her best efforts, Fred is too hurt by this development, and they break up. Each of them tries to build a new life, without thinking of the past. Five years later, Laurence sends a copy of his first book of poetry to Fred.

Pieta (2012)

Pieta (2012)

Director: Ki-duk Kim
Country: South Korea
Runtime:104 minutes

Hired by a loan shark for the payment of debts from customers late, Kang-do behave like a butcher, horribly maiming his victims and spreading death. Until it shows up at his door a woman who says she is the mother and the blame for every crime, regretted having abandoned at birth and left to grow up without love. After it has been subjected to the most terrible trials to make sure he's telling the truth, Kang-do finally accepts the woman, but the fear of losing puts it, for retaliation, in a position to check in which he always kept his victims.
The life, death, money. Kim Ki-duk is a term too, an intruder fatal. The pity is not a trilogy but a sacred figure, which includes only two actants. The money should not have a place in these areas, but has acquired, and is a fallacy that demand justice, or rather, an executioner.
There is no doubt that Mercy is a film about the disproportion. He says in one fell swoop (eye) the image of the lead couple: a giant boy and a little lady, and it confirms that every scene, every nuance. The cruelties of Kang-do is beyond measure, as well as the stupidity of some debtors. I am the endurance of one, the ingenuity of the other, the architecture of revenge. They are, therefore, the decisions in the story and direction: the sex scenes admittedly excessive, the musical emphasis, the use of an actress, Cho Min-soo, the skill out of the ordinary.
Yet, one can not help but feel a overconfidence by the South Korean director, a display of self, which sometimes takes strength to what is happening within the frame, or simply prevents to surprise us. It is a kind, this, that Kim has already ridden and which excels in, but not more enchants. If it were not for the massive amount of irony that has fallen into this eighteenth film, probably more than in any other previous work, the risk would be that of preaching morality to overlap somewhat, as is the kyrie eleison final. "Lord, have mercy."
Saved by irony, Kim gives then, after all, a movie circumscribed and high, partly inspired by his countryman Park Chan-wook, but intimate and dirty, less lyrical and more rooted in the "passions" of this dark time.

The Orator (2011)

The Orator (2011)

Director: Tusi Tamasese
Country: New Zealand | Samoa
Runtime: 110 min



In a Samoan village, a dwarf with legitimate claims to chiefdom lives an unhappy life of ridicule with his wife, who was banished from her own village at a young age, and his pregnant step-daughter. When his wife dies, a conflict arises over the proper arrangements for her burial.

The Orator (O Le Tulafale) is a contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness and love.  Small in stature and humble, Saili lives a simple life with his beloved wife and daughter in an isolated, traditional village in the islands of Samoa.  Forced to protect his land and family, Saili must face his fears and seek the right to speak up for those he loves.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Director: Benh Zeitlin
Country: USA
Runtime: 93 min




In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

Outbound (2010)

Outbound (2010)

Director: Bogdan George Apetri
Country: Romania
Runtime:87 min

IMDB Review:
Author: Chris Knipp (Berkeley, California)

Romanian director Apetri's powerful Outbound has some of the tragic intensity, at least in its ending, of De Sica's Bicycle Thief or René Clément's Forbidden Games. First-timer Apetri, aided on the screenplay by a trio of experienced writers, has made one of the best films to come out of the new Romanian cinema. It takes place when a woman prisoner who's served two years of a five-year sentence gets a one-day pass to attend her mother's funeral. She has no intention of turning herself back in. Her day is a chronicle of desperation and hope, beginning with her brother and ending with a doomed train ride. Whatever the crime was, it seems the sullen-faced Matilda (Ana Ularu) wasn't the perpetrator but instead has taken the hit for Paul, the father of her 8-year-old son Toma and a thoroughly sleazy character. Matilda and Paul made a deal, but just see if she can hold him to it. But she has other scores to settle and hard knocks to take.

The Romanians show a penchant for methodical real-time intensity and Apetri is no different, though a key to the power here is a willingness to elide unnecessary details, even maintain a degree of mystery, in the interest of focusing, as the great Italians did, on a few powerful scenes. Even if Matilda is out of jail and some key scenes are enacted in a wide, desolate open space designated by the original title, Periferic, she still seems to have the bars around her, holding her in the claustrophobia of a life that went wrong early. The actress, with a face as simple as a boy's, has a fixed, sullen glare that sticks in your mind.

The narrative is in three parts focused on three names: Andri, Paul, and Toma. We find out very vividly who they are. In a prologue Matilda (Ana Ularu) leaves prison on a 24-hour pass to attend her mother's funeral. Right outside the gate she meets up with a fat trucker (Ion Sapdaru) in a sleeveless shirt: it's summer, and everybody is sweaty. Her plan is to collect money to pay this man later to drive her to the port of Constanta, where she will catch a ship to smuggle her out of the country.

The first stop is Andri (Andi Vasluianu), Matilda's handsome brother. He's not pleased to see her, though he can't entirely hide fraternal feeling. She has disgraced the family, and also ill used him. His wife Lavinia (Ioana Flora) is even more openly hostile. Nonetheless they reluctantly take her to the funeral, and in that ride we feel Matilda's determination and toughness. Lavinia's insults only make her smile. She ingratiates herself with no one, smoking a cigarette outside the cemetery and walking away from the table at the al fresco dinner afterward. Andri is shocked, maybe pleased, to learn he has an 8-year-old nephew, but he's not willing to take Matilda's son in, and Matilda leaves.

The next meeting is with the abusive, self-indulgent Paul. He will give Matilda only a fraction of the payoff, saying it's not due till five years are up. He has brutal sex with her, then reveals that their son, Toma (Timotei Duma), whom he was supposed to be caring for, is in an orphanage. So that becomes an additional stop before the truck ride to the ship, and it turns into a train ride, with more brutal surprises and the shattering finale, which yet has a poetic rightness about it.

The tight schedule Matilda must follow -- she has to meet the trucker by evening and must escape before the prison knows she's missing -- heightens all the action, but Apetri's directing never feels rushed and makes every minute count. Ularu may seem one-note at times, but her unwavering drive is the key to Outbound's urgency.

Cristian Mungiu of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days co-wrote the original story. Marius Panduru of Police, Adjective did the warm, brown-tinged photography.

Outbound has shown at Locarno, Warsaw and Toronto. Seen and reviewed as part of New Directors, New Films, the series co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from March 23 through April 3, 2011.
 

Clip (2012)

Clip (2012)

 Director: Maja Milos
Country: Serbia
Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes

 

Clip is not another ‘coming-of-age’ story about the complexities of adolescence. Miloš has made an honest and non-judgmental portrait of teenagers caught in sexual and social turmoil. Sexually explicit and emotionally disturbing, it goes beyond borders and even further. Jasna is a beautiful girl in her mid-teens. Disillusioned by her life in a remote Serbian town with a dispirited mother and terminally ill father, she opposes everyone, including herself, and goes wild, experimenting with sex, drugs and simply killing time. But gradually, this desperate protest helps her come to terms with painful reality. In her first feature, Maja Miloš (1983) explores the disturbing state of adolescence as bravely and honestly as her protagonist explores herself. Isidora Simijonovic, also a debutant, gives a striking and fearless performance full of contrasts. Together they create a highly dynamic and vibrant portrait of wasted youth lost in the search for identity. Miloš sets this ‘classical’ coming-of-age story in the world of contemporary teenagers obsessed with pornographic images, virtual reality and soft violence, meanwhile exploring the blurring boundaries between sex and affection, simple pleasures and true love, brutality and tenderness. Above all, Clip examines the shifting family and social values in present-day Serbia, where the generation gaps are extreme, placing everyone between disintegrating traditions and uncertain contemporary morality.

The Taste of Money (2012)

The Taste of Money (2012)

Director: Sang-soo Im
Country: South Korea
Runtime: 115 min


Young-jak who is a private secretary of madam BAEK, the center power of Korean conglomerate, deals with immoral private issues of her wealthy family. As his desire for money and power grows, he endures whatever he’s ordered to do and letting people around him get hurt is not a concern for him. Meanwhile, Young-jak reports to madam BAEK that madam BAEK’s husband, Mr. YOON is having an affair with a Filipino nanny, Eva. Madam BAEK is now despaired, then greedily seducing Young-jak for her sexual desire.
On the other hand, he begins to feel conflicted by madam BAEK’s daughter, the only family member who approaches him with the true heart. Lost between his morality and shortcut to successful life, he has to make the biggest decision he’s ever made to choose whom he will hang on to, in order to survive in this harsh world.

Corpo celeste (2011)

Corpo celeste (2011)

Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Country: Italy
Runtime: 100 min 





13 year old Marta who is struggling to resettle to the south of Italy after ten years growing up in Switzerland. Bright-eyed and restless, she observes the sights, sounds and smells of the city but feels very much an outsider. Marta is about to undergo the rite of confirmation and she takes catechism but confronts the morality of the local Catholic community. From experiencing her period to making a bold decision to cut her hair, Marta begins to shape her own life for the first time since moving back to Italy.

Detachment (2011)

Detachment (2011)

Director: Tony Kaye
Country: USA
Runtime:97 min


Detachment is a chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of a substitute teacher named Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment. A perfect profession for one seeking to hide out in the open. One day Henry arrives at his next assignment. Upon his entry into this particular school, a secret world of emotion is awakened within him by three women. A girl named Meredith in his first period. A fellow teacher Ms. Madison, and a street hooker named Erica, whom Henry has personally granted brief shelter from the streets. Each one of these women, like Henry, are in a life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.

Paradise: Love (2012)

Paradise: Love (2012)

Director: Ulrich Seidl
Country: Austria | Germany
Runtime: 120 min

The premiere of the first part of Ulrich Seidls PARADISE trilogy was celebrated in this year's competition of the Cannes Film Festival with great success. The film tells the story of Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), a 50-year-old Austrian from Vienna who travels as a sex tourist to Kenya in search of love. On the beaches of Kenya they´re known as Sugar Mamas: European women to whom black beach boys offer sex to earn a living. The movie of Ulrich Seidl deals about older women and young men, the market value of sexuality, the power of skin color, Europe and Africa, and the exploited, who have no choice but to victimize other victims.

PARADISE: Love is the opener in a trilogy about three women in one family who take separate vacations: one as a sex tourist, another as a Catholic missionary (PARADISE: Faith) and the third at a diet camp for teenagers (PARADISE: Hope.) Three films, three women, three stories of longing.

"Paradies: Liebe," Ulrich Seidl's film about middle-aged white women who go to Kenya to exploit poverty stricken males by paying them for sex. Most women of a certain age who have "let themselves go" have long since given up on passionate sex. To be adored and hungered for isn't on the menu. In its place, either sexless companionship or chicken-fried steak and the jackrabbit vibrator. But the truth of it, which is what "Paradies" sets out to illustrate, is that it isn't really sex so much as love that many of these women are after. But if is to be sex for money, it might as well be as customer-friendly as possible. We're accustomed to seeing men exploit vulnerable women in poor countries for sex, but we haven't often seen women do it. It's hard to imagine a woman, much less one who looks like your grandmother, needing sex so much she becomes the predator. But just because a woman's sexuality is hidden from view after she reaches middle age doesn't mean it goes away. The story follows Teresa (Margarete Tiesel), a woman who works with the disabled. She's a single mother to an indifferent teen, and for the most part has nothing in her life that makes her even remotely happy. Life has become a chore. Then her friend tells her how African boy toys in Keyna are ripe for the picking, just waiting for a white "sugar mama." It's a mutually beneficial relationship if everyone plays by the rules -- he needs her money, she needs his attention.
Teresa decides to go to a Kenyan resort, and for much of the early part of her trip we watch her parade around in her bra and underwear. The director doesn't want us to see her as a desirable woman. He appears to seek both our disapproval and perhaps our repulsion, and he succeeds at both. Watching Teresa lumber around the room, we can't take our eyes off of her flab, which hangs from her torso and rests on her upper thigh. We silently wonder: What man is going to want to devour that? We hate ourselves for thinking that -- but we're all thinking that.
What follows is a display of the very desperation that motivates young African males to seduce women like Teresa, playing an odd courting ritual. First comes the hand-holding, then the trip to the young man's improverished village, then the purchase of a condom, then awkward sex in a tiny hovel. At first, Teresa resists the advances of her fake beau, but soon she meets a guy who knows exactly how to seduce her. 

To Rome with Love (2012)

To Rome with Love (2012)

Director: Woody Allen
Country: USA | Italy
Runtime:112 min




 Four separate stories with a common scenario: the city of Rome. In the first, an American couple (Woody Allen and Judy Davis) travels to Italy to meet the family of his daughter's fiance (Alison Pill). In the second, an Italian (Roberto Benigni) is no reason for the famous overnight. In the third, a California architect (Alec Baldwin) visits Rome with friends where she meets a student (Jesse Eisenberg) and in the fourth, a newlywed (Alessandra Mastronardi) are lost in the Italian capital, which have been to visit the family of her husband

Holy Motors (2012)

Holy Motors (2012)

Director: Leos Carax
Country: France | Germany
Runtime: 115 min

 We follow 24 hours in the life of a being (DL) moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old to the point of dying; sometimes destitute, sometimes wealthy. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man…

It’s clear that DL is playing roles, and plunging headfirst into each – but where are the cameras, the crew, the director? He seems horribly alone, exhausted from being chained to all these lives that are not his, from having to kill enemies that are not his enemies, having to embrace wives and children who are not his. But sometimes, conversely, we feel DL is wounded by having to leave, the moment his scene is over, other beings he would have liked to leave no longer.

Where is his home, his family, his rest?

Chantrapas (2010)

Chantrapas (2010)

Director: Otar Iosseliani
Country: France | Georgia
Runtime: 122 min

 Nicolas is an artist, a filmmaker who merely wants to express himself and whom everyone wishes to reduce to silence. When he first starts out in Georgia,

the "ideologists" hope to gag him, concerned that his work does not follow the set rules. In the face of their determination, Nicolas leaves his homeland for France - the land of freedom and democracy. But the "state of grace" will not last long.

Dan Fainaru

Welcome to the private, whimsical world of Otar Iosseliani. Access permitted only for those who share his constant thirst for any liquid containing alcohol, the stronger the better, for his ironic outlook of the world around him and his immense sympathy for the human race, despite its countless shortcomings.

The film is cut by Iosseliani in his typical easy-going manner, suggesting that telling the story in a cogent manner.

Unbelievers would better stay away, for they will never quite grasp the spirit of this satirical sketch, autobiographical to be sure, though, as Iosseliani himself points out, reflecting not only his own past (he claims to have been luckier than the film’s hero), but that of many others, from Alexander Askoldov to Andrei Tarkovski.

Probably one of the more personal pages in Iosseliani’s family album, this is bound as usual to be welcome only in festivals and art houses, but luckily, there are plenty of those around.

The two sections of the plot are quite similar, though the first part takes place in Iosseliani’s native Georgia, the second in France, the country he has lived in since the early 1980s. It starts with the illicit projection of a film sequence (in reality a Iosseliani short of 1959 never shown before) and it goes on to follow Niko (Tarielashvili), an aspiring filmmaker, facing ideologues who are only too happy to explain officially their objections to his work, and to congratulate him secretly for his talents.

There is a brief flashback to Nicholas’ childhood and plenty of insights into the particular nature of his family and his neighbors, not to mention a glimpse or two into his filmmaking and his clashes with the filmmaking system.

Once it is clear there is no future for him at home, he tries his luck in Paris, sweeps the streets, cleans the zoo, feeds the elephants and the bears and finely meets a producer who offers him the chance to direct a film in France, at which point he discovers that the free-spirited West puts no fewer obstacles on his way than the indoctrinated censors of home.

The plot, however, has never held much of an interest for Iosseliani, it is the details on the road that have always delighted his admirers in the past, and will probably charm them all over again. A poet at heart whose visual imagination is always at work - watch one shot young Niko sets up which starts with an orchestra playing on a balcony and ends with an officer being blown-up by a bomb behind a tree - as he delivers his running commentary on the world we live in, embracing one and all in a warm, gentle hug and rejecting any such sentiments as spite or revenge, which would make life so much more miserable to live.

Around brief guest performances by Iosseliani himself (he claims the actor for whom the role was intended died just before the shooting), Bulle Ogier and celebrated actor/director Pierre Etaix in a great send-up of a French producer, the cast consists, as usual, of non-professionals who fit perfectly in the mood, with lead Tarielashvili quite reminiscent of the young Iosseliani.

Homogenously shot by two different cinematographers, one in Georgia the other in France, the film is cut by Iosseliani in his typical easy-going manner, suggesting that telling the story in a cogent manner has never been an essential quality in his eyes.

Compliance (2012)

Compliance (2012)

 Director: Craig Zobel
Country: USA
Runtime: 90 min

 

When a prank caller convinces a fast food restaurant manager to interrogate an innocent young employee, no-one is left unharmed. Based on true events. (IMDB)

At a fast food restaurant, the manager, Sandra, is having a bad day. Suddenly, she gets a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer who has a complaint that one of her young female employees has stolen from a customer. At the orders of this authoritative sounding stranger, Sandra takes the apparent accused, Becky, to a back room to search her before she is picked up. Once there, the phone scammer manipulates the gullible personnel into participating in Becky's sexual humiliation that grows more twisted with every new sucker on the phone. Only when one final person has the conscience to revolt do they realize the crime they were tricked into, which the real police are hard pressed to solve. Written by Kenneth Chisholm.
 

Sister (2012)

Sister (2012) 

Director: Ursula Meier
Country: France
Runtime: 97 min

 Every day, twelve-year-old Simon takes the cable car up to the mountains where the slopes bristle with the hustle and bustle of winter season tourists. He pokes about in hotel wardrobes and changing rooms looking for something to eat in rucksacks, but what he’s really after are skis that he can turn into cash.
Whenever he talks to holidaymakers or hotel staff, he tells them that his parents died in a car accident and that he lives alone with his sister. Louis, the young woman who lives in the apartment in the valley has no idea what Simon gets up to all day long. Their odd relationship alternates between quarrels and tenderness.

Ursula Meier sets her second feature-length drama against the backdrop of a popular tourist destination in the Alps. From the broad, anonymous mass of people, she has distilled the story of one child who believes he has found a way to offset his breadline existence. This portrait of a boy on the brink of puberty, poised between deceit and an unquenchable need for love and tenderness, is at the same time an exploration of the contradictions and hidden depths of an ostensibly prosperous world

 

 

Papilio Buddha (2012)

Papilio Buddha (2012)

Director: Jayan Cherian
Country:India
Runtime:108 min 

 A band of displaced untouchables in Western Ghats of India embrace Buddhism in order to escape from caste oppression. Papilio Buddha explores the life of a group

of displaced Dalits in the Western Ghats of India and probes the new identity politics based on Ambedkarism, gaining momentum among the Dalits in the region, in the milieu of an ongoing land struggle.

Thursday Til Sunday (2012)

Thursday Til Sunday (2012)

Director: Dominga Sotomayor Castillo
Country: Chile
Runtime:92min

 Scenes from a marriage, viewed from the back seat of the spacious Mazda 929 that a Chilean family uses to go on holiday for a couple of days. Sensitive, personal debut by Sotomayor, beautifully shot by camerawoman Bárbara Álvarez (25 Watts, The Headless Woman).

This Chilean road movie is set entirely in and around the car belonging to a middle-class family on a four-day trip to the north of Chile. It will be their last journey as a family. We occasionally catch a glimpse of marital problems, but the crisis is largely implicit. For instance, we often only see the backs of the silent parents' heads, seen from the perspective of the children in the back seat, who only have a partial idea of what is going on.
The journey that starts so cheerfully with all kinds of games in the car quickly acquires melancholy undertones: the children only want to go to the beach, while the father is heading for a new life in another apartment and the mother primarily yearns for a place which no longer exists, where everything remains the same as it was.
Dominga Sotomayor previously made the short film Videogame, which screened at IFFR in 2010. That film also focused on a divorce, seen from the perspective of the child: a boy loses himself in the fictional world of a video game while his parents divide the household effects.

On the Road (2012)

On the Road (2012)
Director:Walter Salles
Country: France
Runtime: 124 min







 Young writer Sal Paradise has his life shaken by the arrival of free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his girl, Marylou. As they travel across the country, they encounter a mix of people who each impact their journey indelibly.

Flower Buds (2011)

Flower Buds (2011)

Director: Zdenek Jirasky
Country: Czech Republic
Duration : 1h 30mn


Flower Buds tells the story of the gradual breakdown of a family living in a small town. Each character lives according to his or her own ideals. Agata wants a happy life far from home, fully aware that her only hope is to escape and therefore betray those close to her. Honza believes in the purity and power of love, regardless of the circumstances under which it is born. Kamila looks confidently to the future and does not intend to accept the misery of the present. The only Jarda knows that he will not change the world or himself. Aware of his weakness, he does not even try. In his mind, of course, his addiction to slot machines, which has led to a nearly impossible situation, is as certain as most gamblers' belief of an imminent win. The real and convincing attempt to rescue his family comes when it is too late. It is just a futile gesture, a desperate last ditch effort.

Kauwboy (2012)

Kauwboy (2012)

Director: Boudewijn Koole
Country: Netherlands
Runtime: 81 min





10-year-old Jojo lives alone with his father, a night watchman. His mother is said to be a country singer touring the US but because his dad won’t tell him anything more, Jojo’s left on his own to worry. When a young jackdaw falls out of his nest one day, Jojo takes him in. He forgets his troubles for a while, caring for the bird and making a new friend too. Life seems to be getting better, though his worries about his mother don’t completely go away. A beautiful film telling a truly touching story about growing up in a tough situation.

The Angels' Share (2012)

The Angels' Share (2012)

Director: Ken Loach
Country: UK | France
Runtime: 101 min


This bitter sweet comedy follows protagonist Robbie as he sneaks into the maternity hospital to visit his young girlfriend Leonie and hold his newborn son Luke for the first time. Overwhelmed by the moment, he swears that Luke will not have the same tragic life he has had. Escaping a prison sentence by the skin of his teeth, he’s given one last chance…

While serving a community service order, he meets Rhino, Albert and Mo who, like him, find it impossible to find work because of their criminal records. Little did Robbie imagine how turning to drink might change their lives – not cheap fortified wine, but the best malt whiskies in the world. Will it be ‘slopping out’ for the next twenty years, or a new future with ‘Uisge Beatha’ the ‘Water of Life?’ Only the angels know

Artificial Paradises (2011)

Artificial Paradises (2011)

Director:Yulene olaizola
Country: Mexico
Duration : 1h 22mn 


 Luisa is 25 years old and fighting a heroin addiction. Having escaped the city she finds herself seeking repose in a fading beach resort that rests on the lush seaside hills of Veracruz, Mexico. Inhabitants and conversations are sparse, but Luisa finds a quiet companionship with 50-year-old local Salomon, an alcoholic widower who spends his days smoking marijuana.

The film’s breathtaking landscape, captured by talented cinematographer Luisa Tillinger, is a slice of serenity, even though the village’s permanent residents grapple with the reality of paradise’s temporal promises. It is an interesting and apt backdrop for this less-than-ordinary love story between two people battling dependency. Director Yulene Olaizola, a rising Mexican directing talent who first gained attention with her award-winning documentary Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies, collaborates with co-screenwriter Fernando del Razo and actress Luisa Pardo to create a rich and sincere narrative debut that subverts the typical addiction tale and highlights the subtle yet powerful performances by Pardo and Salomón Hernández. Tribeca Film Festival

The Monsters (2011)

The Monsters (2011)

Directed by PedroDiogenes,Guto Parente,Luiz Pretti,Ricardo Pretti
Country: Brazil
Runtime: 81 min

 The combination of free jazz with the quest for artistic freedom is the off-handed focus of rambling and scruffy "The Monsters," the second feature by Brazilian filmmaking quartet Guto Parente, Luiz Pretti, Pedro Diogenes and Ricardo Pretti, Luiz's twin brother. The same, ultra-loose sensibility in the group's previous "Road to Ythaca" underlies this oddly titled pic, in which a couple of jazz musicians and their sound recordist pals -- all hardly monstrous -- ultimately get together for a remarkable jam session and possible artistic breakthrough. Music and Latin-accented fests are likely destinations beyond ultra-art confabs.
In line with their usual practice, the four play the leads, though unlike their road movie "Ythaca," each have more individual moments during the course of a film that seems for long stretches to have no detectable structure. This is partly due to the film's total immersion in free jazz, which starts immediately, when Joao (Luiz Pretti) does a three-minute solo on his sax-like, handmade horn. His wife's (Natasha Faria) silent response is to kick him out of their house -- and after a drunken night, he crashes at the flat of Joaquim (Diogenes) and Pedro (Parente), who hate their jobs as part of the sound crew on a dumb commercial movie.

Joao's hopes for emotional relief with a gig at a small club owned by tubby impresario Antonio (Ythallo Rodrigues) proves a bust when his radical and atonal improvisations drive away the customers. The guys get some consolation with a long night of partying, but the real turnaround comes with the unlikely arrival (on a raft!) of guitarist Eugenio (Ricardo Pretti).

The 13-minute finale is extraordinary, as Joao and Eugenio launch into an extended jam recorded by Joaquim and Pedro, and marks one of the rare examples in recent cinema of uncompromising jazz played onscreen. It's certainly a first for filmmakers to perform such difficult music so audaciously. The influences of horn men Sam Rivers, Eric Dolphy and Anthony Braxton and guitarist Derek Bailey can be powerfully heard, and rep an entirely different kind of jazz sound than Brazil's sturdy, familiar decades-old Bossa Nova style.

Vid lensing (by team Ivo Lopes Araujo and Victor De Melo), and the overall production package, is as unrefined as the slacker lifestyles inside the film. Multiple oncamera music perfs rack up 23 minutes of the pic's 81-minute running time.

The Conductor (2012)

The Conductor (2012)

 

Director: Pavel Lungin
Country: Russia
Runtime:86 min

 

 

 

 

The conductor and his orchestra is sent to Jerusalem to perform the oratorio "St. Matthew Passion." But the tour turns into a tragedy. Black sun of Jerusalem rips the masks, forcing to see himself naked in selfishness and cruelty. Sometimes a person can fully reassess and rethink his life.