Tasher Desh (2012)

Tasher Desh (2012)

Directors: Qaushiq Mukherjee, Q
Country: India
Runtime:112 min








     The story of a prince who escapes his destiny, the prison of his mind. He lands on a fascist island and incites women to revolt. A psychedelic fantasy about destiny and humanity, social control and Utopian revolution.                                                      

                                                                                    

Vivan las Antipodas! (2011)

Vivan las Antipodas! (2011)

Director:Victor Kossakovsky
Country: Germany | Argentina
Runtime: 108 min

What would be the shortest route between Entre Rios in Argentina and the Chinese metropolis Shanghai? Simply a straight line through the center of the earth, since the two places are antipodes: they are located diametrically opposite to each other on the earth's surface. During his visits to four such antipodal pairs, the award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captured images that turn our view of the world upside down. A beautiful, peaceful sunset in Entre Rios is contrasted with the bustling streets in rainy Shanghai. People who live in a wasteland are connected to people dwelling next to a volcano. Landscapes whose splendor touches the soul are juxtaposed with the clamor of a vast city. These antipodes seem mythically connected, somehow united by their oppositeness. Kossakovsky's movie is a feast for the senses, a fascinating kaleidoscope of our planet. VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS! - Long Live The Antipodes! What is happening on the point of the earth diametrically opposite to where we are now, what awaits us there? Fascinated by this question, Victor Kossakovsky conducted an experiment, and in the course of his unique project visited four coupled antipodes - in Argentina and China, Spain and New Zealand, Chile and Russia, Botswana and Hawaii. Thanks to a keen sense of the magic of his eight locations, Kossakovsky captures unforgettable images. He follows the menacing glow of a volcano's lava, contemplates the majestic flight of a condor, documents human attempts to rescue a stranded whale. A sunset in Argentina's Entre Rios is juxtaposed with rush hour in Shanghai. Tranquil silence and amber light contrast with noisy industriousness and metallic hues. The movie approaches its subject playfully, and Kossakovsky's deployment of the camera is innovative: the earth's surface bends right in front of our eyes, images upside down.

Horses of God (2012)

Horses of God (2012)

Director: Nabil Ayouch
Country: Morocco
Runtime: 115 min

Yachine is 10 years old, he lives with his family in the slum of Sidi Moumen in Casablanca. His mother, Yemma, leads the family as best as she can. His father suffers from depression, one of his brothers is in the army, another is almost autistic and the third, Hamid, 13, is the boss of the local neighbourhood and Yachine’s protector.
When Hamid is sent to jail, Yachine takes up jobs after jobs, though empty, to get free from the doldrums of violence, misery and drugs.
Released from prison, Hamid, now an Islamic fundamentalist, persuades Yachine and his pals to join their "brothers".
The Imam, Abou Zoubeir, their spiritual leader, starts to direct their long-standing physical and mental preparation.
One day, he tells them they have been chosen to become martyrs.

V . . . . e (double) (2013)

V . . . . e (double) (2013)

Director:Jean-Marc Boulard
Runtime: 8min
Country: France

They arrived at dusk at our home. One from Hiroshima, the other from Roma... a tale of the two cities...
Another v . . . . e (visite/voyage/visage) paying tributes to Pasolini and Mizoguchi through our guests and to Japanese art seen by Eisenstein in the early 1920s...

After the Battle (2012)

After the Battle (2012)

Director: Yousry Nasrallah
Country: France | Egypt
Runtime: 116 min



Once a member of one of the notorious armed groups that were coerced by the Egyptian Government to carry out violent attacks on protestors in Tahir Square on 2nd February 2011, Mahmoud has since lost his job, been subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment, and been ostracized by his own community that live close to the Pyramids.

Mahmoud and his family are close to despair when he meets Reem, a secular young Egyptian divorcee and modern-thinker who works in advertising. Reem is a fervent ecologist who lives in a wealthy neighbourhood. Their encounter will change the course of their lives forever.

Mapa (2012)

Mapa (2012)

Director: León Siminiani
Country: Spain | India
Runtime: 85 min



Midway between documentary and fiction, this is a road-movie narrated in first person about a young filmmaker who travels to India in search of a new “map” for love, for life.

A young director is fired from his job in television. Returning to his dream of making films, he travels to India to “find” his first feature film, only to realise that his true search is not in India, but in Madrid: he was running away. But things don’t go exactly as he’d expected on his return.

My Dog Killer (2013)

My Dog Killer (2013)

Director: Mira Fornay
Country: Slovakia
Runtime: 90 min

Marek has no real friends except his guard dog and hangs out with skinheads. When his dispirited mother reappears in his life, Marek faces a horrible predicament. An authentic and hypnotic chronicle of a sluggish existence always on the verge of explosion.

A small village on the Slovak-Moravian border. Strangers are not welcome here. Locals seem to be suspicious even of each other. This is where eighteen-year-old Marek lives. His guard dog is his only true friend. Neglected by his relatives, he has found an illusory escape in the company of local skinheads. Nazi without a cause, he blindly follows them, and they train him exactly like he trains Killer, his dog. When his mother and young half-brother suddenly appear in his life, Marek faces a terrible dilemma. Either he will violently explode or he will find an inner capacity for the compassion he is so scared of.
This subtle, sensitive film is not just about racists and ethnic conflicts in contemporary Europe. First of all, it is about wrong choices that, once made, cannot be altered. It is about chances that appear, only to be missed. Mira Fornay captures this state of terrifying apathy in a series of long contemplative shots. Calm on the surface, they are full of hidden anxiety and disturbing uncertainty.
With no music, just natural sounds and real settings, Fornay makes what is almost a documentary portrait of totally lost human beings. The leading characters are very competently portrayed by native non-actors, and their huge contribution makes the film very authentic.

Priest's Children (2013)

Priest's Children (2013)

Director: Vinko Bresan
Country: Croatia
Runtime: 1 hour, 32 min.






 Don Fabijan is a young priest who comes to serve on an unnamed small island in the Adriatic. In order to help increase birth rate on the island, he decides to pierce condoms before they are sold. He therefore teams up with the newsagent Petar and the pharmacist Marin. After they abolish all forms of birth control on the entire island, the consequences become more and more complicated.

Jîn (2013)

Jîn (2013)

Director: Reha Erdem
Country: Turkey
Runtime: 122 min

Jîn is something of a Red Riding Hood, a 17-year-old girl determined to live, to participate in life no matter what it takes; and to this end she finds herself battling her way bravely through dark forests.

The film opens with Jîn fleeing an armed organization in the mountains for an unknown reason. She spends solitary days in the mountains and forests hiding both from organization members and from security forces. Her aim is to get to the big city, to achieve her dreams of new and wider worlds unknown to her until now. Armed with a small but robust body and a fresh but powerful sense of resolve, she manages to create a space for herself in the dark and forbidding wilderness. She gets caught in crossfire and courageously dodges the bullets, she knows fear and cold, she finds things to eat. The animals she closes ranks with, perhaps because they face similar threats, are her greatest source of strength and consolation. She shares a cave with a bear to escape a shelling, she finds an ally in a deer, she treats an injured donkey, she makes a pact with a savage bird whose egg she eats, shes consoled by a wildcat, alerted by a snake and protected by a horse...

Eventually, she lays her hands on some civil clothing and makes her way down from the mountains. But for Jîn, the plains are more dangerous than the mountains, more threatening and more hurtful. No matter how hard she tries, how resolutely she struggles, she cant break through the barricade closing in on her, and the world of her dreams remains elusive. She continues to take a battering both to her willowy frame and to the feelings and sensitivities inside. She returns, deeply disillusioned, to her solitary existence in the mountains and reaches out mournfully to the natural world. She finds herself caught once more between toppled trees and dismembered animals as the shells and bullets rain down. By now her sense of rebellion has turned to despair. Stuck in an impasse, Jîn has no one but the trees and animals to nurse her wounded body and soul.

Turtles do not die of old age (2010)

Turtles do not die of old age (2010)

Directors: Hind Benchekroun, Sami Mermer
Country: Canada | Morocco
Runtime: 92 min

*Turtles do not die of old age* takes a look at a vanishing generation. This film invites us to share in the lives of three elderly men from northern Morocco. Hovering around 80 years old, each of the three men: Chehma, a former master fisherman; Radi, a solitary innkeeper; and Laroussi, a street musician, still works to earn a living. The film illustrates their desire to continue living, presents their outlook in the face of an approaching death, and reveals their courage to ceaselessly work... despite their age. Chehma, Radi and Laroussi's predicament reaches beyond Morroccan geographic boundaries. It ushers us through the universality of life, old age and death. This is a documentary anchored in the men's daily rituals, enveloped with a compassionate humanity.

Lucia(2013)

Lucia(2013)

Director: Pawan Kumar
Country: India
Runtime: 135 min






From the director of smash hit Lifeu Ishtene, Pawan Kumar, comes Lucia, heralding a new direction for Kannada cinema, being the industry's first crowd funded film. An usher at a decrepit cinema suffers from insomnia. His life changes when he starts getting weird and wonderful dreams but with a caveat. Set in the teeming young metropolis that is Bangalore, the film is a turbulent ride where the lines between dreams and reality are blurred to delirious effect.

The Patience Stone (2012)

The Patience Stone (2012)

Director: Atiq Rahimi
Country: Afghanistan
Runtime: 102 min

Somewhere, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, in a country torn apart by a war... A young woman in her thirties watches over her older husband in a decrepit room. He is reduced to the state of a vegetable because of a bullet in the neck. Not only is he abandoned by his companions of the Jihad, but also by his brothers. One day, the woman decides to tell the truth to him about her feelings about their relationship to her silent husband. She talks about her childhood, her suffering, her frustrations, her loneliness, her dreams, her desires... She says things she could never have done before, even though they have been married for the past 10 years. Therefore, this paralyzed man unconsciously becomes syngue sabour, a magic stone which, according to Persian mythology, when placed in front of a person shields her from unhappiness, suffering, pains and miseries. In this wait for her husband to come back to life, the woman struggles to survive and live. She finds refuge in her aunt's place, who is...

8-Ball (2013)

8-Ball (2013)

Director: Aku Louhimies
Country: Finland 
Runtime: 107 min


Pike has just been released from the penitentiary, and is now a mother of a beautiful baby girl. Leaving behind her torn youth, she now marches towards the great unknown - to her future. Only one thing is certain: she can afford no more mistakes.

Pike's ex-lover, Lalli, shows up ruining her plans for a clean start. The passion that once bound the two lovers together is still there.

Lalli is not the only man interested in Pike's destiny; crime inspector Elias has decided to find out how Pike is doing after her release. Or maybe he's in love? Elias is partnered up with another police officer, Olli, who is recuperating from a severe occupational accident, and trying to get on his feet after a breakup with the mother of his child.

While Pike is looking to forget her past, Olli is scrambling to find his way back to the way things were. But in life there's no turning back - what lies ahead, must be faced.

Gloria(2013)

Gloria(2013)

Director: Sebastián Lelio
Country: Chile
Runtime: 110 min










A story set in Santiago and centered on Gloria, a free-spirited older woman, and the realities of her whirlwind relationship with a former naval officer whom she meets out in the clubs.

Oh Boy (2012)

 Oh Boy (2012)

Director: Jan Ole Gerster
Country: Germany
Runtime: 83 min



The tragicomedy “Oh Boy!” is a self-ironic portrait of a young man who drops out of university and ends up wandering the streets of the city he lives: Berlin. The film deals with the desire to participate in life and the difficulty to find one's place. Black and white, tragic and funny, Oh Boy! is a winning debut from director Jan Ole Gerster and was released on November 1, 2012 in German cinemas. It stars Tom Schilling in the lead whose character Niko’s thought are for example as follows: “Do you know that feeling, that people around you seem to you to be strange? And the longer you think about it the clearer it becomes that not the people, but you yourself are the problem?”

Fair Sex (2012)

Fair Sex (2012)

Director: Martin Laroche
Country: Canada
Runtime: 89 min




Sophie underwent genital mutilation in Africa at the age of four and then immigrated to Quebec. Twenty  years later, having graduated with a degree in film, she gets a summer job in a travelling amusement park. When her boss finds out about her film background, he asks her to make a short video about his company.

Sophie gets caught up in the game with her camera, filming everything – even things that have nothing to do with her work. She films her friends, and also herself, and gradually she sees that she is creating something else -- that she is making a film about her own life and about the secret that she has kept since her childhood.

La Sirga(2012)

La Sirga(2012)

Director: William Vega
Country: Colombia
Runtime: 88 min





Alicia is helpless. Fleeing the armed violence that has claimed the lives of those dearest to her, she ends up in La Sirga, at the guesthouse of Oscar, the only family she has left. Here, on the shores of a great lake in the Andes, she tries to rebuild her life. But this place, where she feels safe, is not spared by the fighting. The return of Freddy, the son that Oscar has been awaiting for years, his enigmatic intentions and his possible link with the warring factions bring La Sirga what Alicia fears the most.

The Secret Society of Fine Arts (2012)

The Secret Society of Fine Arts (2012)

Director: Anders Rønnow Klarlund
Country: Denmark
Duration : 1h 15mn




A group of underground artists blow up Berlin's zoological museum and declare it "a work of art". Their goal is to set beauty free. The unrelenting passion fascinates actress Eva Kovacs, who joins the group. But how do you draw the line between art and terror?

The Secret Society of Fine Arts is unparalleled in Danish cinema. Anders Rønnow Klarlund eliminates the medium's most vital element - moving images - and tells his story through 3D processed still photos. The intention is to make us sharpen our senses.

It's inspired by Chris Marker's French still photo film La jetée, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012)

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012)

Director: Sophie Fiennes
Country: UK
Runtime: 136 min









The sequel to The Pervert's Guide to Cinema sees the reunion of brilliant philosopher Slavoj Zizek with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, now using their inventive interpretation of moving pictures to examine ideology - the collective fantasies that shape our beliefs and practices.

Stories We Tell (2012)

Stories We Tell (2012)

Director: Sarah Polley
Country: Canada
Runtime: 108 min 

In this inspired, genre-twisting new film, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon, leaving a trail of unanswered questions. Polley unravels the paradoxes to reveal the essence of family: always complicated, warmly messy and fiercely loving. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families, all interconnecting to paint a profound, funny and poignant picture of the ...

Meghe Dhaka Tara (2013)

Meghe Dhaka Tara (2013)

Director:Kamaleswar Mukherjee
Country:India
Runtime: 02:34

To Ritwik Ghatak film was not merely a form of entertainment, but a weapon, a medium to portray struggle of common men. He was successful neither in his career nor he could he become a good family man or husband. Still he was an artist who never compromised for personal gain, fame or profit. The story of the film starts in 1969 and deals with Ritwik Ghatak's time spent in a mental asylum. It shows Nilkantha being admitted to mental asylum under the supervision of Doctor S. P. Mukherjee. S. P. Mukherjee learns that the Prime Minister of India knows Nilkantha and is fond of his works and may request the hospital authority to take special care of him. In the hospital a police officer sees Nilkantha and tells Doctor Mukherjee that he is a wasted drunkard. Another patient of hospital mocks Nilkantha as "disgraced intellectual". Even he was undergoing treatment in the hospitals, he writes a play and stages it with other asylum patients. The film shows how Durga (Nilkantha's wife) wants to ...

Wadjda (2012)

Wadjda (2012)

Director:Haifaa Al-Mansour
Country: Saudi Arabia
Runtime: 98 min 

 WADJDA is a 10-year-old girl living in a suburb of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Although she lives in a conservative world, Wadjda is fun loving, entrepreneurial and always pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with. After a fight with her friend Abdullah, a neighborhood boy she shouldn't be playing with, Wadjda sees a beautiful green bicycle for sale. She wants the bicycle desperately so that she can beat Abdullah in a race. But Wadjda's mother won't allow it, fearing repercussions from a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl's virtue. So Wadjda decides to try and raise the money herself. At first, Wadjda's mother is too preoccupied with convincing her husband not to take a second wife to realize what's going on. And soon enough Wadjda's plans are thwarted when she is caught running various schemes at school. Just as she is losing hope of raising enough money, she hears of a cash prize for a Koran recitation competition at her school. She devotes herself...

Marcelle Hanselaar: Postcard from the Edge (2013)

Marcelle Hanselaar: Postcard from the Edge (2013)

Director: Thomas Völker
Country: UK
Runtime: 12 min 

"POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE" is a short but intimate portrait of the Dutch painter MARCELLE HANSELAAR directed by German filmmaker and artist Thomas Völker. The film was made on the occasion of Hanselaar's Solo Show "Walking The Line" which took place at Kings Place Gallery London between May and June 2013. From the exhibition catalogue: Marcelle Hanselaar's familiar theme, the conflicting awareness and subsequent struggle with the balance of how we see ourselves and how we appear to others, has now found a bigger arena. Her gripping paintings of a solitary figure, with or without props are still there but now, for the first time, she takes this theme into the public realm, something she has freely explored in her large etchings but never before in her paintings. The result is a Breughel-esque tableau vivant. Hanselaar says "I am fascinated by the phenomena of crowds, how the shift from private to collective behavior creates a shift of inner boundaries as well. Our familiar sense of inner... 

The Past (2013)

The Past (2013)

Director: Asghar Farhadi
Country:Iran
Runtime: 130 min



Coming back to accomplish the divorce procedure, Ahmad an Iranian man, arrives in Paris after four years to meet his ex-wife and her daughters from her previous marriage. He notices his ex is in a relationship with an Arab named Samir who also has a son and a wife in a coma. The relationship of the older daughter and her mother is in deterioration because the daughter thinks her mother is the cause of Samir's wife comatose state. The affairs get more complicated when the older daughter discloses something heinous she has done.

The Great Beauty (2013)

The Great Beauty (2013)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Country: Italy
Runtime: 135 min

This visually spectacular film, which carries echoes of the classic works of Federico Fellini, was enthusiastically received by festival audiences and critics upon its premiere. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called it 'an outlandishly entertaining hallucination,' and according to Variety's Jay Weissberg it's an 'astonishing cinematic feast.' Journalist Jep Gambardella (the dazzling Toni Servillo, Il Divo and Gomorrah) has been a permanent fixture in Rome's literary and social circles since the legendary success of his one and only novel. Armed with a roguish charm, he has seduced his way through the city's lavish night life for decades, but when his 65th birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

La banda Picasso (2012)

La banda Picasso (2012)

Director: Fernando Colomo
Country: Spain
Runtime:100min








Take Picasso, Apollinaire, Manolo, Braque, Max Jacob and Gertrude Stein, and mix in the robbery of the 'Mona Lisa' from the Louvre. Together, the film presents a good-humoured view of the jealousies and intrigues between the characters.

Dripped (2011)

Dripped (2011)

Director: Léo Verrier
Country: France
Runtime: 9 min

Jack is a strange character. He steals paintings from museums to eat them. He feeds himself with the artistic process of the painter. But one day, the museums are closed and he will have to paint by himself to survive. 

Paradise: Hope (2013)

Paradise: Hope (2013)

Director: Ulrich Seidl
Country: Austria
Runtime: 100 min 

Her mother goes off to Kenya in search of beach boys willing to provide her with amorous services. Her staunchly Catholic aunt is absorbed in house-to-house evangelism. Thus, thirteen-year-old Melanie spends the holidays in a diet camp in the Austrian mountains. In between physical training and nutritional counselling, nightly pillow fights and a secret bout of binge drinking at the local disco, she falls in love with the doctor and camp director, who is forty years her senior. Melanie uses all her seductive wiles to win him over …
In the third part of his 'paradise' trilogy - following Paradies: Liebe and Paradies: Glaube - Ulrich Seidl pits the deep-seated human desire for love and security against harsh reality. From the sterile surroundings of the diet camp, Seidl filters impeccably pristine, minimalist images in which any hint of sensuality, passion or anarchy would appear to be a complete anathema. And yet Paradies: Hoffnung is the most tender of the three ‘paradise’ films, for his young protagonists bear within them a spark of hope that love is not just an illusion, but can be an honest and powerful emotion.

Hannah Arendt (2012)

Hannah Arendt (2012)

Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Country: Germany
Runtime: 113 min

Hannah Arendt is an interesting movie based on the true controversy caused by the report written by Arendt on the Eichmann trial. The movie by Margarethe Von Trotta offers a different perspective on World War II. One that is rarely approached: the post-Holocaust trials. Hannah Arendt was a Jewish great thinker who covered the trial of the SS Eichmann for The New Yorker. After she published her report, she was accused of defending Eichmann when she stated that the Jewish leaders certainly played a role in the deportation of so many Jews and that the SS officer was simply a piece of a much more complex puzzle. I think you'd be better off checking background information on Arendt and her work and this specific trial to perfectly understand the film. The movie also lacks some clarification about the characters and their relationships. For those reasons, I find it a bit elitist and not easy to reach. But I definitely like how the plot focuses on Arendt's personal struggle to respect her philosophical impartiality and freedom of speech. She's stuck into the battle between her thoughts and people's judgment. I believe the screenplay could have dug a bit deeper into Arendt's self-struggle and loneliness as this topic of the banality of evil will remain her life-long philosophical and inexhaustible well. I especially appreciated how the archive footage and audio files are perfectly inserted on screen. The director used several languages switching from Hebrew to English or German with touches of French. It surely makes the story true to the immigrant universe. This movie has an undeniable quality to it but I expected much more from such a topic that could have been examined to its fullest. I was hoping for more insight on being a public figure and having to justify your every opinion as well as being treated as a renegade by your own people, friends, and family.

The Fifth Season (2012)

The Fifth Season (2012)

Directors: Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth
Country: Belgium
Runtime: 93 min

Winter, spring, summer, autumn...and then? La cinquiememe saison (The Fifth Season) is an apocalyptic tale which does not need to make use of extraterrestrial aliens or natural catastrophes to impress the viewer. Humans and nature have a very fragile connection - what if nature suddenly decided to cut this connection?

Set in a little rural village in the Ardennes, the inhabitants are preparing for the local feast to celebrate the end of the winter. But something goes wrong: the fire that was supposed to light up the bonfire refuses to burn, a bad omen for the whole community. We do not see the end coming at first but season after season we gradually witness a slow but implacable process of decay: the crops do not grow, the animals become sterile, people fall ill and the trees collapse. The two young protagonists Alice and Thomas, the outsider Pol and his paraplegic son, and all the others can do nothing other than be spectators to this silent disaster.

La cinquieme saison cleverly mixes ancient peasant beliefs with contemporary fears such as the collapse of the natural world. It is a powerful viewing experience, perhaps because of the intimacy of the environment in which it happens. Protagonists and viewers alike are utterly powerless in front of such drastic changes. It is a slow death and, even though it is not set in a famous city like most catastrophe films, the film suggests that the same process is happening everywhere in the world.

The cinematography is outstanding: each single frame could be a magnificent photo and actors, props and sets are all arranged with extreme attention to composition and perspective. Like puppets in the hands of destiny, humans are helpless and nature, being non-human, has no pity. Bleached out colours highlight this little world in decay. Dying trees and vast empty crops surround the village as reminders of the imminent end. We are given a little hope when a man from some other village drives there, symbolically selling plastic "flowers of hope" - but it is an illusion. To say more would give too much of the film away, however.

The directors Brosens and Woodworth created and excellent work of spectacular photographic beauty, detailing archetypical fears of men vs nature in which there is no space for hopeful illusions. A distressing film but a unique cinematic experience that gives food for thought and employs a great cast.

Printed Rainbow (2006)

Printed Rainbow (2006)

Director: Gitanjali Rao
Country: India
Runtime:15min



A big city. A tiny apartment. There, in solitude, live an old woman and her cat, stuck in their daily chores against the hiss of the city.

The Windows look out into more windows with more desolate lives.

The old woman, however, has a secret window: her precious collection of match boxes. Their printed labels open into a myriad of exotic worlds. The cat is the sole companion in her explorations of these magical worlds where beauty, imagination and wonder triumph over the insignificance of her existence.

Lilet Never Happened (2012)

Lilet Never Happened (2012)

Director: Jacco Groen
Country:Philippines
Runtime: 105 min







The film Lilet Never Happened is a character driven story about Lilet, a maladjusted Philippine street-girl, who becomes Manila's most famous child prostitute. International social worker Claire desperately tries to safe Lilet from the sex industry but she falls again and again. Though Lilet gets many opportunities to quit, she stubbornly chooses the hard way.

Night Across the Street (2012)

Night Across the Street (2012)

Director: Raoul Ruiz
Country:Chile
Runtime: 110 min




On the verge of a forced retirement, Don Celso, an elderly office worker begins to relive both real and imagined memories from his life - a trip to the movies as a young boy with Beethoven, listening to tall tales from Long John Silver, a brief stay in a haunted hotel. Stories hide within stories and the thin line between imagination and reality steadily erodes, opening up a marvelous new world of personal remembrance and fantastic melodrama. A playfully elegiac film from the great Raul Ruiz, conceived to be seen only after his death, Night Across the Street is a beautiful final masterwork exploring the director's favorite subjects: fiction, history and life itself.

Yesterday Never Ends (2013)

Yesterday Never Ends (2013)

Director: Isabel Coixet
Country: Spain
Runtime: 108 min




Year 2017. Barcelona. A couple reunites after five years of not seeing each other and after going through some tragic incidents in their past in their lives. She had stayed in Spain while he moved to Germany. Two ways of facing the current economic crisis: she preferred the idealism of staying and struggling to change the situation, and he left everything behind, a more lucid and logical point of view. When they both feel that the past is no longer important, it suddenly comes back. Unhealed wounds will always remain open.

Chomana Dudi (1975) aka Choma's Drum

Chomana Dudi (1975)

Director: B.V. Karanth
Country: India
Runtime: 141 min

Choma is an untouchable bonded-labourer in a village who is working along with his family for a landlord, due to a paltry loan of twenty rupees borrowed from him years ago.Due to his social status, he is not allowed to till his own land, something that he desires most. Though he managed to rear a pair of bullocks that he found straying in the forest, he cannot use them to till the land. He comes in contact of Christian missionaries who try to convert him giving him the lure of the land, but Choma does not want to let go of his faith. He releases the fury that fate has beset on him, by beating his drum.

He has three sons and a daughter; two of his elder sons work in a distant coffee estate trying to pay off the debt. One of the sons dies of cholera and the other one converts to Christianity by marrying a Christian girl. His daughter, Belli works in the plantation and falls for the charm of Manvela, the estate-owner's writer. She is raped by the estate owner, who then writes off Choma's debt. She returns to Choma's home without telling him of the reality. His youngest son drowns in a river, with nobody coming to save him because of him being an untouchable. He then finds his daughter in an compromising position with Manvela. With anger, he beats her and kicks her out of the house. To defy his fate, he starts tilling a piece of land and then chases off his bullock into the forest. In the climax, Choma shuts himself in his house and starts playing the drum till he dies.

Moebius (2013)

Moebius (2013)

Director: Ki-duk Kim
Country: South Korea
Runtime: 89 min

A woman catches her husband cheating and in a fit rage brings a knife into his bedroom, slips under the covers and tries to castrate him. He awakes and thwarts her impetuous plot but still wracked with anger she then visits her teenage son's room and dismembers him instead.

The above plays out over mere minutes but to say any more about the events that unfold would only dilute its impact. Safe to say, things only get worse and more bizarre as the film's protagonists are pushed to delirious extremes. It's not exactly a restaging of the Oedipal Complex (though some of its elements are evident) but it does borrow a lot from Greek tragedy, though it's a bit more extreme than what you would find in the Classics.

The Dead Man and Being Happy (2012)

The Dead Man and Being Happy (2012)

Director: Javier Rebollo
Country: Spain
Runtime: 92 min

This is the story of a Spanish man on the top floor of a hospital in Buenos Aires who one day realises he is dying. Aware that he only has a short time left to live, the man hot-foots it from the hospital and heads north, making his way across Argentina. The dying man knows that all roads lead to the whole world, that the destination matters little; what is important is to keep moving, to have the feeling of never stopping, of leaving behind the life lead until now. A life that, given his specialised trade, had always kept him close to death. That's why, as a professional, he advances peacefully towards it, making his way along B-roads, drifting slowly as if in a modern book about chivalry. A woman he meets on the road will be his squire in this movement that does anything but flee from death, instead heading straight towards it. This film is the tale of a hit-man who doesn't kill. It's the story of guns that don't shoot, of dogs and roads.

Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)

Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)

Director: Bruno Dumont
Country: France
Runtime: 95 min









Winter, 1915. Confined by her family to an asylum in the South of France - where she will never sculpt again - the chronicle of Camille Claudel's reclusive life, as she waits for a visit from her brother, Paul Claudel.

Paradjanov (2013)

Paradjanov (2013)

Directors: Serge Avedikian, Olena Fetisova
Country: Ukraine | France | Georgia
Runtime:95 min 

Sergei Paradjanov can, without exaggeration, be called one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the 20th century. Indeed, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky were among the many admirers of his fascinating powers of visualization. This biopic, evincing an original take on the genre, relates some of the key moments in the life and work of this director of genius, a native Armenian who was persecuted by the Soviet authorities. We watch Paradjanov as he makes his ground-breaking films Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates, and also during his imprisonment by the communist regime. The filmmakers present Paradjanov as a gifted artist overflowing with ideas, but also as a complicated personality. In creating the film’s artistic vision, the directing duo relies heavily on Paradjanov’s own, unmistakable trademark style, vividly showing the audience his distinctive way of seeing the world.

Fuck for Forest (2012)

Fuck for Forest (2012)

Director: Michal Marczak
Country: Poland
Runtime: 1 hour, 22 minutes





Danny, a roaming twenty-something from Norway, moves in with neo-hippies in Berlin. His new housemates form a group that campaigns on behalf of nature through 'ecoporn'. Surrounded by old-school clouds of incense and guitar music, they film their sexual exploits and then publish the films on their activist website. Visitors to the site pay to watch the films and the group uses the money to save rainforests. For this documentary, Marczak follows these extremely serious 'erotic activists' in Berlin and on their trips to Colombia and Peru, from which the well-intentioned hippies return rather disillusioned. The protagonists are introduced in a dryly comic voice-over that subtly confirms all the stereotypes. As do the protagonists themselves, who make coffee topless, incessantly smoke joints and say such things as: 'I really like your energy level.' Free love meets altruism meets twenty-first-century campaigning.

15: The Movie (2003)

15: The Movie (2003)

Director: Royston Tan
Country:Singapore
Runtime: 96 min





Fast, frenetic, and furious, 15 is the story of five Singaporian teenagers who, abandoned by the system and estranged from their parents and life in general, build their own world in which gangs, drugs, fighting, piercing, self-harm and suicide are common and brotherhood is important above all else. Presents the chaotic lives of these boys, living in the shadows of a sprawling metropolis and with only each other to rely on.

The Only Journey of His Life (2001)

The Only Journey of His Life (2001)

Director: Lakis Papastathis
Country: Greece
Runtime: 87 min

As Georgios Vizneyos, one of Greece's greatest authors, degenerates in an Athens mental asylum, the tale of another story-teller, his grandfather, begins to emerge through his mad ramblings. This lavish film recreates (through his own words) the writer's childhood life, rich with fantasy and legend. Apprenticed to a tailor, young Georgios' mind is filled with his grandfather fairy tales. He ponders the hill from which one can climb into the sky and waits each day for the chance to bring clothes to the princess and win her heart through song. But, just as reality begins to germinate doubt in his mind, Georgios is called home to his ailing grandfather, who will reveal one final, true story that may prove to be the most fantastic of all.

Los amantes pasajeros

Los amantes pasajeros

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Country: Spain 
Runtime: 90 min




AN AIRLINER circles above central Spain. Technical problems have left the plane doomed, destined for a crash-landing. Frantic with nerves, passengers and crew-members descend into an orgy of alcohol, drugs and sex. Thus Pedro Almodóvar, the prince of modern Spanish cinema, allegorises the state of his country in his latest film, “Los amantes pasajeros”

Journey to Mytilene (2010)

Journey to Mytilene (2010)

Director: Lakis Papastathis
Country: Greece
Runtime:     1h 45mn

Kostas returns to his homeland Mytilene in Lesbos, a Greek island in the Northern Aegean Sea, to settle down the details about the inheritance of the family house. He left the place twenty years ago to study in Paris and he never went back. Now his return forces him to deal with the traumas of the past. He obviously studied cinema and is able to watch the world from the safe distance provided by the lens of the camera. He’s gradually reconciled with both the living and the dead. And eventually this experience helps him not only to regain the love for his homeland but also to come in terms with his own self.

  Papastathis (Theofilos 1987, The Only Journey of His Life 2001) as a pioneer documentary director belongs to the generation of film-makers that established the so-called “new Greek cinema” of late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He came to fiction films only much later shooting his first feature film in 1981. Like other late-bloomers of new Greek cinema he retained the formal awareness of Angelopoulos cinema trying at the same time to find a distinctly individual style. He met with great difficulties to make films at a regular rate, especially at a time when film as an art in Greece had a limited domestic and international support. So this is just the fourth feature film in thirty years from a director who is unanimously considered ‘important’ by Greek film critics although he’s simultaneously been accused of 'formalism' or, even worst, of morbid infatuation with the decay and the death. But there’s nothing here to be scared of except for some extensive use of POV camera - if this can be frightening - combined with repeated flash-backs and ceaseless switch from b&w to colour and vice versa. ‘Journey to Mytilene’ is mostly a nostalgic, tender and humane film.

Djembefola (1991)

Djembefola (1991)

Director: Laurent Chevallier
Country:Guinea
Runtime: 65 min

Mamady is one of the best african percussionist in the world. This film from 1991 follows him as he goes back to the village where he grew up in Guinea for the first time after 26 years. It becomes a moving adventure as we witness Mamady getting back in touch with his people and his old master. It features some really amazing dance moments ; LOTS of emotions ; and great chanting/percussions of course.

At the begining we learn how Mamady, as a baby, cried so much that his father took him to a witch doctor. After predicting a great future in which the baby would grow up to overshadow everybody else in the village, the doctor washed the infant's hands in a rare herbal potion.

Mamady Keita became a prodigy who at 14 was one of five percussionists selected for membership in the National Djoliba Ballet. His instrument, the djembe, is a large drum that is made of goat's hide tautly stretched over yoroko wood and is beaten with the hands. Depending on which part of the instrument is touched, it yields three distinctive tones. Even now he marvels at how, after hours of playing, his hands never become stiff or blistered.

The straightforward, smoothly edited film follows Mamady from Brussels on a pilgrimage to his native village of Balandugu, Guinea. After flying from Brussels to Conakry, Guinea's capital, Mamady Keita and the film crew make the rest of the trip by jeep to the remote village. There, he has a tear-filled reunion with friends and relatives who had assumed he was dead.

"Djembefola" accomplishes a lot in its 65 minutes. In addition to sketching a vivid portrait of its subject, it clearly describes the basic qualities of the djembe. The film's several extended musical sequences suggest how the instrument's beats and tones become a complex emotional language that serves as a kind of communal heartbeat for the people of Balandugu.

Post Tenebras Lux (2012)

 Post Tenebras Lux (2012)

Director: Carlos Reygadas
Country: Mexico
Runtime: 115 min

POST TENEBRAS LUX (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, POST TENEBRAS LUX palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition.

Shabdo (2013)

Shabdo (2013)

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Country: India
Runtime: 100 min 






Tarak is a professional foley artist whose obsession with creating sound effects for films makes him oblivious to all the talking around him. As his family and friends struggle to cope up with his changing soundscape, Dr Swati tries to figure out the roots of his obsession and finally succeeds to identify. Yet, Tarak plunges deeper and deeper into the world of the unheard as his love for cinema is unplugged. 

Almayer's Folly (2011)

Almayer's Folly (2011)

Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
Runtime: 127 min

Chantal Akerman’s 2000 film The Captive was an ingenious reduction of the fifth volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Almayer’s Folly, her second foray into literary adaptation, transplants Joseph Conrad’s 1895 debut novel, which concerns a Dutch trader living in Malaysia, to the 1950s.  Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) came to Southeast Asia long ago to seek his fortune. He married the adopted Malay daughter of the wealthy Captain Lingard in the hopes of winning an inheritance, but Lingard’s fortune gradually dwindled after a series of ill-advised journeys in search of hidden treasure. Now Almayer is resigned to a meagre existence, running a trading post where no one trades. Nina (Aurora Marion), his half-Malay daughter, is his sole source of hope and comfort. But Dain, the young man Almayer had enlisted to help him find the lost treasure his father-in-law fruitlessly sought, has eyes for Nina, and threatens to steal her away from this steamy backwater forever.

I'll Sing For You(2001)

I'll Sing For You(2001)

Director: Jacques Sarasin
Country: France
Runtime: 76 min

 In the early '60s, the West African nation of Mali was under French rule as its people struggled toward independence, and musician Boubacar Traoré became a star in his home country as its people dreamed of political freedom and better lives. Boasting a strong, blues-influenced voice and a hypnotic guitar style, Traoré -- better known as "Kar Kar" -- played music that showed the influence of the newer pop and rock sounds from Europe and the United States, and spoke of love and freedom in equal measure. However, at the height of his fame in Mali, Kar Kar disappeared; while he was a popular radio performer, he was unable to secure a record deal, and he was unable to support himself and his wife on his radio performance fees. Traoré became a tailor, and in time left Mali for self-imposed exile in Paris after the emotionally devastating death of his wife. Years later, a music producer who had heard recordings of Kar Kar's fabled radio performances offered him a chance to make an album, which led the artist back to Mali and the musical career he had abandoned. Je Chanterai Pour Toi is a documentary on Boubacar Traore's long road from fame to obscurity and back again, which features performances by both Traoré and fellow African guitar hero Ali Farka Toure.