foreign films

Director-screenwriter Teemu Nikki describes his feature film, Euthanizer as the “Dirty Harry of animals”. The film revolves around the rights, suffering, and death of animals.

Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story, is based on true events: the widely publicized 2007 trial of one of the few documented cases of a mother killing her adult son. Knowing the outcome of the story doesn’t hint at the journey.

Padmavaat is based on a Sufi poem of the same name written in 1540 by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali added his own flair and interpretation giving the epic a fairy-tale feeling.

Dogman, Matteo Garrone’s latest film, competed in this year’s Cannes festival – and deservedly so. With this work, the Italian director returns to the dark atmospheres and locales of his Golden Globe-nominated Gomorrah (2009) and gives a huge heart to this dark Italian western, which is also an engaging character study of a very troubled man and the people who take advantage of his kindness.

July 22, 2011 was the day the world changed for Norway. In a country which had never really seen terrorism, first a bomb exploded in the government building, then the terrorist attacked students at a summer camp hosted by Norway’s Labor Party on the island of Utøya in the Tyrifjorden lake, 24 miles northwest of Oslo, killing 77 youths.

The feature debut of 32-year-old writer-director A. B.

Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most prolific filmmakers. His classics have earned five Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign Language Film, including To Live, Shanghai Triad, Hero, House of Flying Daggers and The Flowers of War.

What happens when you pair a Golden Globe-winning Iranian director who doesn’t speak Spanish with two actors who don’t speak Persian? Golden Globe and two-time Academy Award winner Asghar Farhadi faced just such an artistic challenge when he brought together husband and wife Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the haunting thriller Everybody Knows, set in a small town in Spain. Having previously shot The Past in France and A Separation in Iran, Farhadi’s style of working with his actors is pushing beyond language to find the inner machinations of the characters, where they are from and what their feelings are.

In 2014 Huang Hsin-Yao made a short film called The Great Buddha. This year he expanded it into a feature-length movie.

The second World War ended 73 years ago, but new stories about courage and resilience continue to come out of that dark chapter of history. Witness the Dutch film, The Resistance Banker – the true story of the remarkable Van Hall brothers.