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.