Golden Globe Awards

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.

At the 13th Golden Globes, held February 23, 1956, at the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Grace Kelly (seated with producer Joe Pasternak (Anchors Aweigh, The Merry Widow, Please-Don’t Eat the Daisies)  received our special award as World Film Favorite-Female. It was one of Kelly's last - if not THE last - public appearance in Hollywood.

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.

When news that Lucrecia Martel was trying to adapt Zama, the famous novel by Antonio di Benedetto, which was recently translated to English, more than 50 years after it was published in Argentina, the independent film world couldn't be more excited. After all, Martel was the one who created a new kind of Latin American cinema with her highly successful debut in 2001, La Cienaga, released in the US with its original Spanish name after winning awards at Sundance, Berlin, and Havana.

Austrian director Michael Haneke is an awards season and festival darling, having won two Golden Globes and having been nominated for two Oscars. He likes to shoot his films in France, which might explain his seven Palme d’Or and Grand Prix wins in Cannes.