foreign films

Singaporean director Anthony Chen’s second film, Wet Season, deals with the forbidden albeit short-lived love affair between Ling (Yeo Yann Yann), a Malaysian teacher in her late 30s, and her teenage student Wei Lun (Koh Jia Ler) amidst the former’s strained marriage and the latter’s struggle to belong. The story unfolds quietly, all along in synchrony with the heroine’s emotional undertones while she goes through painful fertility treatments, takes care of her disabled father-in-law, and increasingly loses connection to her indifferent husband.

The title itself – in German, Was Wir Wollten – is an indication of unfulfilled wishes, in this case the wish for a child. Alice and Niklas, two successful people from Vienna who are in their early 40s, face fertility issues, and after another unsuccessful round of in vitro, they decide to forget about the stresses of getting pregnant and head to Sardinia for what they hope will be a relaxing vacation that will distract them from their emotional wounds.

Hope is buoyed by a superlative performance by Andrea Braeim Hovig, who not surprisingly has won several acting awards this year. There are so many unexpected twists and turns in the telling of the story, all of them authentic and none less than moving, that it comes as a surprise to learn that this is a true story.

This science-fiction feature about an android was the film director Sandra Wollner submitted for her final exam at the film academy in Ludwigsburg, Germany. With it she explores the questions of man and machine, of who and what rules decision-making in today’s world.

In 1995, one of the worst massacres of the Balkan war happened during what was already one of the most violent periods of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. 8,372 innocent civilians were murdered in the Bosnian town of Srebenica by the Bosnian Serb army under the command of General Ratko Mladic, a particularly brutal commander who now serves a life sentence after being convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the international Criminal Court in The Hague.

Zaza Urushadze, known for the Golden Globe nominated  Tangerines (2013), passed away one year ago in his hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia. He was 54 and Anton is his posthumously released farewell movie.

Luisa is a 20-year-old law student from an upper-middle class background. She is as alarmed by the right wing movements and a move to ultra-conservatism in her country as most of her friends.

As a butcher prepares to slaughter a bull whose meat is about to be delivered in preparation for a local wedding party, the bull escapes and runs wild through the village. A small crowd gathers to capture the animal.

Let’s make the world a better place. A premise that we all discuss with friends, sitting around the dinner table, drinking one too many glasses of wine.

A small village in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Higinio (Antonio de la Torre) and Rosa (Belen Cuesta) have been married only for a few months when the Civil War breaks out.