Foreign Cinema

Liliana Pereira is returning to her country where she will confront a past that meant persecution, imprisonment and the loss of custody of her son. As many other women victims of systematic violence, Liliana must choose between what her heart demands and what her conscience dictates.

This Tamil language film from India is a work of courage. It is truly daring to tackle a an unpopular subject – the threat of HIV/AIDS – with a film about a small group of people almost exclusively confined to one room in which they are sitting and waiting.

In 2005, Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr Lazarescu was seen by many as the birth of the Romanian New Wave. Along with his equally uncompromising compatriots, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Radu Jude and Adrian Sitaru, he made their country’s cinema relevant again, with its minimalism, austere realism and bleak subject matter.

Three years after his first Hollywood foray, Stoker, Park Chan–wook returns home with The Handmaiden, a filmset in 1930’s Korea, then under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) is a Japanese noblewoman who lives in seclusion on the grand estate of her overbearing uncle Kouzoki (Cho Jin-woong), a libidinous collector of erotic literature who likes to have his niece read pornography aloud for potential buyers.

Paradise is not the first entry into Golden Globes competition by well known Russian film director Andrei Konchalovsky. His American production, Runaway Train, was nominated for the Golden Globe in the Best Drama category, his American TV mini-series The Odyssey was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards including best mini-series or movie made for TV.

The film is based on the real events surraunding the disastrous earthquake which struck Armenia in 1988. The terrible earthquake claimed at least 25,000 lives and left about half a million people homeless.

They Call Me Jeeg (Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot in the original Italian), the first feature length film by Gabriele Mainetti (known for animation shorts), is a singular object, a blend of superhero fantsy and gritty Neorealism in the mold of De Sica or Rossellini. You could venture to call it Bicycle Thieves with superpowers.

Imagine your estranged father comes to visit you during one of the most stressful periods that your job has to offer, as you are trying to close an important deal. This is what happens to Ines Conradi whose father Winfried, a divorced music teacher and somewhat of an old hippie, surprises her during a meeting in Bucharest where she is currently posted.

Stefan Zweig was an Austrian author, best know for his novellas  “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, "Burning Secret“, "Beware of Pity“ and “The Royal Game”, and biographies like "Erasmus of Rotterdam“ and "Marie Antoinette“, which was bought by MGM in 1938 and made into a film starring Norma Shearer. "Letter from an Unknown Woman“ was also adapted into a film with Joan Fontaine and directed by Max Ophüls.

A little girl's search for her father is the premise of the Finnish drama Little Wing.   The coming-of-age story follows 12-year-old Varpu (Linnea Skog) who one night steals a car and drives to the other side of the country because she wants to find the father she has never met.