Golden Globes

Jonás Cuarón started to dream about Desierto about a decade ago, when Donald Trump was just a billionaire only involved in choosing the most beautiful women for his Miss Universe contest. When Jonás finally sat down to write it, the script was so tempting that it inspired his director father, Golden Globe winner Alfonso Cuarón.

There was an an eruption of joy and a sense of unity among Palestinians worldwide when 23-year-old singer from Gaza, Mohammad Assaf, won the Arab Idol competition in 2013. Among the jubilant celebrators was Golden Globe-winning Palestinian director, Hany Abu Assad, who saw Assaf as more than just a singer but a national icon and a source of pride and hope for his people.

On Tanna, a South Pacific island nation in the Vanuatu archipelago, Wawa, a young girl from one of the last remaining traditional tribes, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an intertribal war escalates, Wawa, unbeknownst to her, is  betrothed as part of a peace deal.

How to stay true to yourself? The Finnish movieThe Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki delves into this universal dilemma. The film is based on a true story that follows the featherweight boxer’s (Jarkko Lahti) grueling training regimen and demanding PR campaign before his championship fight against the American titleholder Davey Moore (John Bosco Jr).

The Ploy (La Macchinazione) by Italian director David Grieco, recounts the last days of director/poet/writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was assassinated on the outskirts of Rome on a November night in 1975. His death is still shrouded in mystery, and the film's authors seems to believe in a conspiracy theory: Pasolini was not savagely murdered by just one person during a sexual encounter, but rather was the victim of a well plotted conspiracy.

Winner of the Silver Bear at the last Berlinale, Things To Come is French director Mia Hansen-Love’s fifth film since 2007. In less than ten years she has proven a unique voice in the French cinema landscape, bringing her distinctive, moody fluidity and approach that often evoke Nouvelle Vague masters Eric Rohmer and Philippe Garrel.

It was said that Tonio, the novel, simply couldn’t be turned into a feature film. The bestelling book by Dutch literary giant A.

Venezuelan director’s Lorenzo Vigas debut film, From Afar, is somewhat of a mystery thriller, but also much more. The film tells the story of a middle aged man, Armando (played by Chilean actor Alfredo Castro, seen in No and The Club), a wealthy but lonely man with a habit of luring young men to his home with the promise of money.

I Am Not Madame Bovary, directed by critically acclaimed filmmaker Feng Xiaogang and starring Fan Bingbing, is a rare satire of China’s bureaucracy in the current landscape of Chinese cinema. The term “Madame Bovary” originates from a famous fictional character “Pan Jinlian” in the 17th-century Chinese novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei).

As Afterimage's credits start to roll, the inevitable becomes a reality: this is the last time we will see Andrzej Wajda's name on a new film. His final cinematic outing could not be a more beautiful and courageous artistic statement, though, which makes it a little more bearable.