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.