Restoration (2011)

Restoration (2011)

Director:Yossi Madmoni
Country: Israel 
Runtime: 84 min


After his longtime business partner dies, Yakov Fidelman discovers that his antique furniture-restoration shop is in grave financial difficulty. He’s forced to deal with his estranged son, Noah, a lawyer, who, seeing no hope for the failing store, proposes building apartments above it. One day Fidelman’s new apprentice, Anton, finds a neglected piano in the workshop: an 1882 Steinway that, given a new baseboard, would be worth enough to save the store.

The elegant story lines of Yossi Madmony’s first feature yield a complex set of frayed character relations for which restoration proves an apt metaphor. Refinishing the piano’s exterior would be worthless without replacing the cracked cast-iron board holding the string tension. Marked by restrained writing, which leaves significant details open to interpretation, Restoration depicts the rich texture of modern Israeli society. Anchored by Sasson Gabay’s mesmerizing performance, Fidelman is a stoic man who uses his shop to shut out the world, clinging to the illusion that he can maintain a vanishing way of life. –

Di buen día a papá (2005)

Di buen día a papá (2005)

Director: Fernando Vargas  
Country: Argentina | Bolivia | Cuba 
Runtime:107 min

 SAY GOOD DAY TO DAD is a story divided into four parts, where the lives of the characters intertwine to tell the story of Vallegrande, a small town for 30 years hid the remains of a saint who came from heaven.
Bones - 1997 tells the story of Welcome Cusitano, the young mayor of Vallegrande, which has a plan to remove the people from their poverty by promoting tourism Che Route. His plan is threatened by the arrival of a Government Commission with a clear instruction to find Che's remains to return to their families. While the excavation sites multiply and dozens of strangers say to the press to know where he is buried Che Welcome Charale his friend Ramon Escalante and his godmother Mamina prepare a strategy to prevent meet and carry the bones of the famous guerrilla.
Promises - 1987 tells the story of Welcome Cusitano and his girlfriend Angeles Escalante, two young vallegrandinos that during the visit of a young caravan commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Che's death, see their daily lives disrupted and their promises love destroyed by the lucrative but dangerous business of "selling Che."
Letters - 1977 tells the story of Mamina Escalante, her daughter and granddaughter Eva Angeles, who own and manage the accommodation Vallegrande The Seven Knights. The quiet life of these women is one day threatened by the arrival of an anonymous letter which enjoined to comply with a "Divine Mandate" if you want to save themselves from the "Curse of Che".
Hands - 1967 tells the story of Ramon Charale, a 9-year-old working as a servant in the accommodation Seven Knights of Vallegrande. In the context of the execution of Che Guevara and the display of his body to the press, Ramon is a friend and collaborator of Jean Moreau, a young European journalist Vallegrande search the news that changed his life. Both will live an adventure that will make the least in the only witness to the place where Che Guevara is buried.

Darling, I Am Going Out For Cigarettes and I Will Be Right Back(2011)

Darling, I Am Going Out For Cigarettes and I Will Be Right Back(2011)

Directors:Mariano Cohn, Gastón Duprat
Country:Argentina
Runtime:80 min

 A darkly comic gem of a thriller with genius performances by leads Emilio Disi and Eusebio Poncela.
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This Argentinian gem of an indie thriller opens with a Spaniard (Eusebio Poncela) walking on the Moroccan desert with his camel. He does not have the sense to stay out of the thunderstorm and is hit by lightning. He is amazed to find himself still alive after the lightning strike and decides to continue. After all, there is no chance that lighting will strike in the same place twice.
Yet, he is struck again. Still undead, he awakes to find himself gifted with a strange power. He has the power to allow mortal humans to relive portions of their lives. They go out for cigarettes, relive a decade of their past and return from the store into the present time. No, this is not a science fiction film. It is a deeply probing study in the mortal and the immortal, and what happens when the two mix.
As the Spaniard realizes his foolishness and his Godliness at the same time, the tone is set for the remainder of his eternal existence. In addition, the tone is set for the 80 mesmerizing minutes of this film. The best-laid plans go awry.
The one-eyed man in the valley of the blind is not king. Be careful what you wish for. Moreover, do not be a fool if you can help it. When you find out that you cannot help but be a fool, make the best of it.
As it turns out, lead character Ernesto (Emilio Disi) is not so much an outright fool as he is a common man. He has no more, or less, foolishness than most. When he strikes his Faustian bargain with the Spaniard he has only the best of intentions.
The question is whether or not, as a mortal human being, he has the ability to use such an inhuman condition wisely. Veteran actor Emilio Disi brings a humble naiveté to the role of a man who seems to have been given a great gift; the gift to go back in time and live one’s life over. Older and wiser, he has the chance to correct past mistakes and to change his own misguided behavior.
As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” This breathes life into the possibilities of being able to plan better things for the life one has already lived. We all yearn for the chance to do some things over; to do them better the second time.
After all, it has to get better; it could not possibly get worse. Seizing his opportunities, talentless real estate agent Ernesto plagiarizes Lennon’s “Imagine” before the former Beatle has a chance to write it.
He notifies the US Embassy of the September 11 attacks before they happen. He says the heart-felt things on his mother’s deathbed that he was too proud and afraid to say at the time.
Nobel and ignoble intentions mix freely with Ernesto’s conversations with the gifted Spaniard. Myths handed down through time come and go. Ernesto is the sorcerer’s apprentice.
He is Mr. Peabody and Sherman from the “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” using the Wayback Machine to travel back in time, usually with unintended results. At the end of the story he has returned from the store with much more than a pack of cigarettes.
This is a story of fate. It is a tale that advances the concept of manifest destiny with the scales slanted towards original sin. We are born; therefore we will manage to pull the worst outcomes of even the best of situations.
In the end, we have failed and we have learned at the same time. This is life. Perhaps not exactly what John Lennon said, but restated as “Life is the reality that happens while we are in a fantasy.
Shot and narrated in an understated tone that brings out the hilarity in the obvious, this film is a remarkably creative addition to the Lincoln Center Latin film festival.
In an environment where so many movies seem bent on taking northern hemisphere residents south, this flick takes us all into a new world where nothing is what we expected. Three cheers for Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat!

Avé (2011)

Avé (2011)

 Director: Konstantin Bojanov
 Country: Bulgaria
 Runtime: 82




 Kamen (Ovanes Torosian) is hitchhiking by the side of the road when he meets Avé (Angela Nedialkova). Both are trying to get to Ruse on the north eastern Bulgarian border, so, despite Kamen's hesitation, it makes sense that they share rides. Once they are in a car together, Kamen is shocked when Avé begins to make up stories about him as if they have known each other all their lives. The further they travel together, the more extreme her lies become, yet although he makes clear his rising anger he can't seem to get rid of her.

Himizu(2011)

Himizu(2011)

Director : Shion Sono
Country: Japan
Runtime:  2 hour 10 min


 Sumida and his schoolmate Keiko are 14 year old school kids living a dystopian existence where each of their parents' hopes and encourages them to die. Set in tsunami-hit areas of Japan about May 2011, which is used as a backdrop, the story follows roughly that of the manga of the same name wherein Sumida fights frequently with his father, is abandoned by his mother and tends to reject friendly advances of others. Eventually, he kills his father and then, assuming his life is ruined, attempts to improve society by killing "bad" people. Although not immediately obvious, what instead happens is that he attacks psychotic and violent characters, while he instead learns from Keiko and the Yakuza and people who befriended him that he himself has become "sick", eventually breaking free of the cycle of violence, but without a complete resolution of the issues raised during the movie before its end. Written by Jeff K. 

If The Seed Doesnt Die (2010)

If The Seed Doesnt Die (2010)

 Director: Sinisa Dragin
 Country: Serbia | Austria | Romania
 Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes





 Two fathers, a Romanian searching for his daughter who was forced into prostitution in Kosovo, and a Serbian seeking the body of his son killed in a car accident in Romania, meet on the river Danube. A boatman recounts the 200 year-old legend of Romanian peasants struggling unsuccessfully to move an old wooden church up the hill to their village at a time when building Orthodox churches was prohibited.

Elles(2011)

Elles

Director: Malgorzata Szumowska
Country: France | Poland | Germany
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes

The most provocative film at this year's Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals, Elles stars Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes for a magazine article. What begins as a routine assignment, though, quickly turns personal, as Anne is drawn into the lives of these fiercely independent young women and forced to confront her own physical needs and desires. ~ elles-movie.com

A writer is given a new perspective on her life by two women she initially imagines could not be more different than her in this drama from filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska. Anne is a wife and mother who maintains a busy schedule looking after her youngest son, who is obsessed with video games, her teenage son, who spends much of his time stoned on marijuana, and her aging father whose health is failing. Anne's husband is too preoccupied with his own career to worry about the household chores, and she has to juggle it all while keeping up with her work as a journalist. Anne is researching a magazine piece about prostitutes, and she's been conducting extensive interviews with Alicja and Charlotte, both of whom are attractive, well-adjusted women in their early twenties who have turned to sex work to support themselves. As Anne develops a greater understanding of Alicja and Charlotte's lives and work, she sees a contrast in the way the younger women have chosen a trade that, despite its reputation, affords them freedom while Anne's personal and professional life have become something of a trap. ~ Mark Deming, Allrovi
 

When Pigs Have Wings (2011)

When Pigs Have Wings (2011)

Director: Sylvain Estibal
Country: France | Germany | Belgium 
Runtime: 98 min



 After a storm, Jaafar, a Palestinian fisherman in Gaza, began by chance in his nets a pig fell off a cargo ship. Determined to get rid of the unclean animal, however, he decided to try to sell it to improve his miserable existence. The poor Jafaar then embarks on a fantastic trade and many unsavory ...
In this tragi-comedy, all the little people of Gaza, wedged between the absolute poverty on a daily basis, the constraints of Israeli military and the diktat of the bearded flying, is represented by the poor fisherman whose sole concern is to survive daily and, for that, everything is ready. Jaafar, a permanent mockery of himself, even in times of tragedy, the story evolves in a biting humor ... and let us hope that if we can agree, despite all the differences, across individual, we can agree ultimately on a collective scale.

Farsan [Balls] (2010)

Farsan [Balls] (2010)

Director: Josef Fares
Country: Sweden
Length: 94 min


 Lebanese-Swedish director Josef Fares gives his real-life father a star-making turn in this charming tale with light comedic overtones about family life among Middle Eastern immigrants living in Scandinavia. The gregarious Aziz, portrayed by the expressive Jan Fares, is a widower looking for love with the help of his co-workers at a rinky-dink bike shop, while his son and daughter-in-law promise to make him a grandfather. He doesn't realize that they can't conceive naturally, however, so they're faking the pregnancy and planning to adopt. Members of the supporting cast - particularly Aziz's colleague Jorgen, played by Torkel Petersson - contribute some wickedly silly moments, but the film really belongs to the two Fares fellows, director and dad, whose off-screen bond makes the on-screen sentimentality shine that much brighter.

Code Blue (2011)

Code Blue (2011)

Director: Urszula Antoniak
Country: Netherlands
Runtime: 1 hour, 17 minutes


 In the shadowy margin between life and death lies the hospital where Marian, an ascetic nurse in her 40s, dedicates herself to the gravely ill and the dying by giving them what is often their last contact with the warmth of a living body. Sometimes she even helps her patients out of their misery by sending them to the soothing order of death. For her, death is a moment of ultimate intimacy. Outside the hospital, Marian lives a solitary life. Occasionally, her suppressed feelings rise and make her drift away from her daily routine: one day, she meets a stranger in the bus, instinctively follows him and fantasizes about him. When Marian sees the man again she gets involuntarily linked to him in an act of shared voyeurism. The sudden act of intimacy between them first repels then fascinates, transfixes and frightens her. Faced with the fragility of her newfound emotions, Marian realizes that she must give in to her human needs, even if this intimacy comes with a price... ~ Filmaffinity

Marian - a middle aged nurse and a secret poisoner - lives in two worlds. Our world, where she is a nurse, a colleague, a sister. When declared sick or dying, some of us are sent to her world - Planet Hospital. Marian is one of the white-uniformed, efficient distributors of help. Death is a taboo in our world. But not in hers. Marian starts to work in a new hospital and moves into her new apartment in a high rise building on the outskirts of the city. Proceeds with her killing routine like a well oiled mechanism. One night she watches a rape from the window of her apartment. She is not the only one to do so. A man living in the same building sees the rape too. More so, he sees Marian watching. What she has seen and the fact that she was seen start to disturb her life. Marian and the stranger engage in a dance of avoidance. Until now she hasn’t shared anything with humans but intimacy of death. Now she has to share a secret with a stranger - her neighbor. Outside world, our life, has invaded her life. To disturb her. To conquer her, death herself. ~ Festival-cannes