foreign films

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, Paths of the Soul follows the journey of a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes in the small village of Nyima, a remote village in Mangkang County, part of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage" to Lhasa, the holy capital of Tibet. The film takes the viewer on an incredible journey along the 1,200 km National Highway 318 over the course of 10 months that can be almost as painful to watch, following a family through suffering, death, childbirth and relentless religious resolve.

Fortunata, which means lucky in Italian, is the name of the young woman at the center of this story set in the Torpignattara neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome. It is the same location as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), now populated with Chinese and Muslim immigrants.

Patricia: El regreso del sueño (Patricia: The Return of the Dream) is the Dominican entry to the Foreign Film Language category at this 75th edition of the Golden Globes awards. The movie, directed by Rene Fortunato, is also one of the few comedies in a category where movies tend to show the most serious fare from all over the world.

It's not usual to see an American film participating in the Foreign Language category of the Golden Globes, especially when it has been shot entirely in this country, but certainly Menashe, which was a success at the Sundance Film Festival early this year, explores a culture that exists in the US that has never been exposed in the way director Joshua Z. Weinstein (no relation to the disgraced mogul) has achieved.

Shot in a documentary style, this French film tells the story of the AIDS epidemic and the fight of an activist group in Paris called ACT UP (the European counterpart of the New York group, formed in 1987) to gain access not only to medication, but also for transparency in fighting the disease. It is set in 1990s Paris as the pharmaceutical industry is too slow in developing drugs, and the politicians in government do not know how to handle the escalating crisis amidst defamation, racism and bigotry.

Cairo. January 2011.

Le Fidèle (Racer and the Jailbird) is the third feature from Flemish director Michael Roskam (Bullhead, The Drop). The crime drama co-stars the sensual French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, known for her breakthrough performance in Blue is the Warmest Color, and Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead, Rust and Bone, The Danish Girl), Belgium’s biggest star who is fast becoming a household name in Hollywood.

The Line is a co-production by Slovakia's Wandal Production and Ukraine's Garnet International Media Group.  It has been chosen as Slovakia’s Foreign Language entry for the Oscars this year.

Ignacio Castillo Cottin's biopic El Inca is this year’s Venezuelan contender for a Golden Globe in the Foreign Language Film category. It’s the same film that almost a year ago was pulled out from Venezuelan theaters by a local court - according to Cottin,.

In her first ever German-language film, Diane Kruger plays Katja, the wife of Kurdish immigrant Nuri (Numan Acar). They live an idyllic middle-class existence in the nice Hamburg neighborhood of Kreuzberg.