Life, Above All (2010)

Life, Above All

Director: Oliver Schmitz
Country: South Africa
Runtime: 100 min





"Life, Above All" is a emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community. The film captures the enduring strength of loyalty and a courage powered by the heart. Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz ("Mapantsula", "Paris, je t'aime"), it is based on the international award winning novel "Chanda's Secrets" by Allan Stratton. Written by Bavaria International  

The Day I Was Not Born (2010)

The Day I Was Not Born (2010)

Director:Florian Micoud Cossen
Country: Germany | Argentina
Runtime: 94 min



 During a stopover in Buenos Aires on her way to Chile, 31-year-old Maria recognizes a nursery rhyme. Maria doesn't speak a work of Spanish, but without understanding what she is singing, she remembers the Spanish lyrics. Disturbed and thrown off course, she decides to interrupt her journey and wander through the unfamiliar city. On the phone to Germany, she tells her father, Anton, about her experience and the peculiar fascination the unfamiliar city has had for her. Two days later, Anton suddenly turns up at Maria's hotel with something to confess: Maria spent the first three years of her life in Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship at the end of the 1970s. The people she had always thought were her parents had adopted her and brought her to Germany. Father and daughter begin a journey in search of Maria's biological parents. Anton does everything he can not to lose his daughter.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

The Skin I Live In (2011)

 Director: Pedro Almodóvar
 Country: Spain
 Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes



 Pedro Almodóvar's macabre suspense thriller is about an obsession that, though not exactly magnificent, has a fanatical intensity. Antonio Banderas plays a Madrid plastic surgeon, wealthy, cultured and respected; he gives brilliant lectures and research papers on advances in face-transplant surgery. Daringly, heretically, he advocates transgenic treatments from animals to toughen the skin. In his palatial home, he has a private operating theatre where he carries out experimental work on Vera, a beautiful woman he keeps prisoner, who is dressed only in a clinging gauzy, flesh-toned material and whose skin has an unnaturally smooth, flawless look. She appears to submit ecstatically to her imprisonment, but this is finally to be the cause of madness and violence. ~ Guardian

As in many of his films, family secrets are revealed through lengthy flashbacks – something forbidden to contemporary Hollywood screenwriters. There is the doppelganger motif, and the younger guy who likes partying and drugs; there are staircase scenes and scenes in which a middle-aged man watches the object of his desire, enraptured, on a large screen. And perhaps most startling, and most characteristic of all, there is Almodóvar's great theme of transsexual identity, which speaks of passion, fantasy and escape. The director himself, in various masks and guises, is present in all of this. ~ Guardian

Viva Riva! (2010)

Viva Riva! (2010)

Director: Djo Munga
Country:Democratic Republic of the Congo
Runtime: 98 min


 Riva is an operator, a man with charm and ambition in equal measure. Kinshasa is an inviting place. With petrol in short supply in DRC's capital, he and his sidekick pursue a plot to get hold of a secret cache - barrels of fuel they can sell for a huge profit. Of course they're not the only ones who want the stuff. Cesar is a ruthless, sharply dressed foreigner thriving in Kinshasa's lawless streets. A female military officer joins the fray. Even the church will betray its tenets for a piece of the action. But Riva's main nemesis is Azor, a crime boss in the classic style: big, decadent and brutal. He's not a man to mess with, but his girlfriend, Nora, may just be the most seductive woman in all of DRC. Riva catches sight of her dancing at a nightclub and it's not long before Nora matches the fuel cache as a coveted object of his lust. IMDB

Violeta (2011)

Violeta (2011)

Director: Andrés Wood
Country: Chile
Runtime:110 min






From the tent up in Regina, Violeta Parra is visited by dreams, experiences and dreams. It is alive, but perhaps she is dead, that opens up a great expectation in which we will gradually Informing their secrets, fears, frustrations and joys. Not only is this his various works, but, their lovers, their memories, their hopes, their achievements are suspended in a passionate journey through the life of Violeta Parra, with the characters that made her mourn, laugh and dream.

The Salt of Life (2011)

The Salt of Life (2011)

Director: Gianni Di Gregorio
Country:Italy 
Runtime:90 min



Gianni is sixty. He is retired but has not become lazy for all that. In fact he is a helpful fellow who gives a hand to all those who need one: shopping for his wife, walking the pretty neighbor's dog, and so on. Everybody likes Gianni, but is it for the right reasons? Doesn't his wife profit by the situation (she still works so it is only logical that Gianni do all the chores)? Isn't he subject to the excruciating whims of his rich mother?... Sure, everybody LIKES Gianni, but who LOVES him? Agreed, being kind to them, he is the ladies pet, but he does not attract them anymore. That is why, when his macho lawyer friend Alfonso blames him for not having young mistresses "like every other senior Italian male", Gianni, who is beginning to ask himself questions about what it is like to become old, starts chasing dames... Written by Guy Bellinger  

Joanna (2010)

Joanna (2010)

Director: Feliks Falk
Country: Poland
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes



Feliks Falk’s latest movie “Joanna” is a story set in the time of World War II. The main heroine’s husband had been sent to an Oflag. One day Joanna encounters a little Jewish girl in a church. Despite the risk, she decides to take care of her.

"Joanna" is an example of a true story as it reflects the behavior of thousands of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Feliks movie has enchanted the audience of 35. Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Tadeusz Sobolewski, a film critic, gave the movie a very positive review. That is what he wrote for Gazeta Wyborcza:

Falks “Joanna” distinguishes itself with a classic structure of the plot, the main idea of which is a trap set for the main character by the fate. This movie, which takes place in Cracow, brings an uncommon element into the Polish cinema — it shows a “make-believe” life during the occupation, a life which is outwardly normal. All the positions in the General Government are filled with Poles. The main character Joanna (Urszula Grabowska), waiting in vain for a letter from her husband who is in an Oflag, gives a shelter to a little Jewish girl whose mother was caught during a round-up. Thus she becomes burdened with a secret she cannot reveal to anyone, even to her relatives. Forced by necessity, she has to cooperate with her enemies, becoming a traitor in the eyes of “her people” — just like the heroine of Has’s memorable movie “How to Be Loved”. The final, symbolic image is suggestive — in a tearful and religious manner — of the fact that sheltering little Róża was Joanna’s personal torture referring to Golgotha. However, the deeper meaning of that story is perverse and bitter: hiding the child was even more dangerous because of Joanna’s “own people”, mutually controlling the patriotic decency.

The Mill and the Cross (2011)

The Mill and the Cross (2011)

 Director: Lech Majewski
 Country: Sweden | Poland
 Runtime: 1 hour, 31 minutes


 "Mill and the Cross" that is, a revolution in the cinema!The long-awaited movie theaters Lech Majewski, who is the film "adaptation" sixteenth-century painting by Peter Bruegel "The Road to Calvary".Mill and the Cross "is a unique option for cinema lovers. Probably nothing like it in the near future will not see - said it plays in the film Charlotte Rampling.
"Mill and the Cross" by Lech Majewski is a film which is set in 1564, when Bruegel painted his masterpiece. The painter shows in the last journey of Christ, but places it is not in Jerusalem, but in modern Flanders him (this is a historical region in present borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and France). Therefore, the topic of Christ's suffering artist wove the martyrdom of his countrymen persecuted for political reasons by the ruling religious and then the Spanish Inquisition there. In this way, Majewski's film is a continuation of the idea of ​​Bruegel, who in the sixteenth century - with his work - appealed for respect for others and tolerance for different views.
The film shown is the fate of several characters from the image including miller, bread carrier, a group of mothers with small children, as well as a young man who was sentenced to a cruel death by attaching it to the wheel on a pole to him zadziobały ravens. In one scene we see the cruelty of the Spanish soldiers zakopujących young woman alive. Sixteenth-century heroes' Way to Calvary "come alive in front of spectators, and the camera reveals their individual parts of the picture that appeared in the final of the whole work of Bruegel hanging on one wall of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
 - This is an extremely successful experiment in art, which can be compared to re-invent the wheel - said with a smile playing in the movie Rutger Hauer (best remembered for her role in the movie "Blade Runner" dir. Ridley Scott). - In the movie it was, after all here is to play more than four hundred years before to connect with contemporary art film - said the actor, who as Bruegel in one of the most important scenes in the film discusses the secrets of his paintings and demonstrates his accompanying art collector (played by Michael York), that the artist is able - through pictures - stop time and the world....

 American-French art critic Michael Francis Gibson, whose essay is titled "Mill and the Cross" was inspired by Polish film director and became the basis for the screenplay for the film explains that the idea Majewski to present the image of Bruegel as a feature film, not a documentary, as he wanted at the beginning, was a surprise for him. - It seemed to me then that it is not difficult to present an image of matter, but most of all the ideas contained in the work of Bruegel - he noted.

 Detective eye Lech MajewskiDirector, screenwriter and film producer, poet, novelist and painter, as well as theater and opera director. Lech Majewski betrays the greatest secrets of his artistic activities.Guest Anne Fuksiewicz in the next release, "Season of Twos" told such about his work, how to read meanings in the paintings of the old painters, and also about his inspirations art. There were also memories of working in the United States.
Extremely rare for artists to artistic activity was confined to so many areas of life, as is the case with Lech Majewski. The question here is Anna Fuksiewicz which of the areas of artistic activity is the closest to him, Lech Majewski clearly pointed to the painting and poetry. - First, I see things, then write them. Poetry, in turn, leads to the rejection of the logic of my cause - effect relationship. Often broadcast logical sense to the world ends in tragedy. The twentieth century was characterized by just building a utopian bliss of human - guy says "Season of Twos."
Mainly inspired by Lech Majewski "old masters". He explains that showed a great skill. - Reading the ancient symbols and meanings in art is a bit detective, but also a fascinating work - Lech Majewski says.
Soon the Polish cinema screens will be the last film by Lech Majewski, entitled "The Mill and the Cross". The film is based on the book published under the same title, written by Michael Gibson. Picture, set in 1564 - the same, in which Bruegel painted his masterpiece - intertwines with the suffering of Christ's Passion Flanders politically and religiously oppressed by the Spaniards.
Lech Majewski says work on the film as extremely difficult. - Two years ago we finished a picture, and still continues postproduction. This is due to tedious, painstaking work that accompanies the preparation of each frame. They are built as Bruegel paintings - Lech Majewski says.

Between Two Fires (2010)

Between Two Fires (2010)

Director:Agnieszka Lukasiak
Country: Poland | Sweden
Runtime;135min


 Young woman and her daughter runs away from Belarus and sent to a refugee camp in northern Sweden. Fighting for survival for herself and her daughter is becoming easy prey around it, an alien world. Soon will be confronted with extreme life choices.

explication of directorial
"Dodgeball" is a very personal film. I came to Sweden as a little girl. This is the reality in which time ceases to exist, the days are passing on the fear of the future and the past is too dreadful to think of it. The only way to survive is the existence of "here" and "now" as in a kind of purgatory, where there is neither alive nor dead. I wanted to show the reality in which people are completely defenseless, and the ignorance of the new rules makes it become easy victims of the reality that surrounds them.
It is a story about just such a life, where time and reality are abstract concepts, and the hopes and fears of these people are permanently etched in their minds and on their faces. I wanted to show the reality in which to survive you have to choose between himself and the person you love. Where do you become a commodity for sale at the price of survival.
While I was writing this script I lived in this camp, to better understand what is in the memories of childhood seems to me as a nightmare. The characters described in the scenario and emerging situations in it are based on real events and people that I met while living there. I wanted to shoot a film in which the statistics will become a reality. The film, which transforms the number and the cases about which we read in real people, in which the notice replaces understanding.
Agnieszka Łukasiak

Elena (2011)

Elena (2011)

 Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
 Country: Russia
 Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes


 Elena and Vladimir are an older couple, they come from different backgrounds. Vladimir is a wealthy and cold man, Elena comes from a modest milieu and is a docile wife. They have met late in life and each one has children from previous marriages. Elena's son is unemployed, unable to support his own family and he is constantly asking Elena for money. Vladimir's daughter is a careless young woman who has a distant relationship with her father. A heart attack puts Vladimir in hospital, where he realizes that his remaining time is limited. A brief but somehow tender reunion with his daughter leads him to make an important decision: she will be the only heiress of his wealth. Back home he announces it to Elena. Her hopes to financially help her son suddenly vanish. The shy and submissive housewife then comes up with a plan to give her son and grandchildren a real chance in life.