foreign films

Andrea Bocelli might be blind, but this did not prevent him from becoming one of the greatest singers in the world. His autobiographical novel The Music of Silence has now been adapted to the screen by British director Michael Radford.

The well-traveled winner of several festival awards, including the Jury Grand Prix and Best Actress prize at the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival, Iranian drama Yellow, writer-director Mostafa Taghizadeh’s debut feature, unfolds against a uniquely intense backdrop and tells a tale of friendships ripped apart. What starts off as a road trip movie, with a seemingly carefree and well-integrated mix of male and female friends seeking to pay a fond farewell to their homeland before leaving for Italy to start new jobs on a shared project, quickly detours into more fraught territory after a terrible car accident injures a young boy.

Since they joined forces for a TV movie in their native Bulgaria seven years ago, former TV reporter Kristina Grozeva and art school graduate Petar Valchanov have become one of the most formidable teams in local cinema. Their short film, Jump, was nominated for the European Film Awards, the first time it happened for that country.

Based on the best-selling novel by Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father tells the gripping story of how a young Loung and her siblings survived the deadly Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1978. Told through the eyes of Ung from the ages of five to nine years old, the film depicts the indomitable spirit and devotion of her family as they struggle to stay together during the Khmer Rouge years.

Italian American director Jonas Carpignano’s A Ciambra won a Directors Fortnight prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by IFC’s Sundance Select label. It is a film steeped in the Italian neorealist tradition as well as modern documentary influenced dramas (think Andrea Arnold’s American Honey or Chloe Zhao’s The Rider, also at Cannes this year).

The title of the Icelandic film - Under the Tree - sounds romantic and idyllic but that is far from the nature of the film. Director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson’s third feature film turns rather dark, to say the least.

Leather, military uniforms, and muscular men inspired artist Touko Laaksonen, better known by his pseudonym, Tom of Finland, who became a gay icon all over the world, shaping the fantasies of a generation of gay men and influencing art and fashion. This biopic, directed by Dome Karukoski, narrates Laaksonen’s life from his early twenties, when he served his native country during the war against the Soviet Union in 1939, to the middle of the sexual revolution in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Directed by Petra Biondina Volpe and starring Marie Leuenberger and Max Simonuschek, The Divine Order representing Switzerland for the Golden Globes describes the long journey of how this country was one of the last Democracies in the world, to approve the feminine vote in 1971. Switzerland had a very developed economy, but, as late as the 1970s, still relied on the “Divine Order” established in The Bible, considering women as second-class citizens.

Spoor is the new movie by veteran Polish auteur and three-time Oscar nominee Agnieszka Holland. The movie is also her first cinematic venture into true crime storytelling, or what she describes as her “cross-genre thriller.

It’s very difficult to find something nice, agreeable or at least amicable, about Quit Staring at My Plate. And that is presumably exactly the intention from the Croatian entry for Golden Globe consideration in the Foreign Language Film category.