Tag: 2004

Director: Ki-duk Kim
Stars: Seung-Yun Lee, Hee Jae, Hyuk-ho Kwon
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: South Korea | Japan

A transient young man breaks into empty homes to partake of the vacationing residents’ lives for a few days.

Director: Zhangke Jia
Stars: Tao Zhao, Taishen Cheng, Jue Jing
Genre: Drama
Country: China | Japan | France

An exploration on the impact of urbanization and globalization on a traditional culture.

Director: Kar-Wai Wong
Stars: Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Faye Wong
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: Hong Kong | China | France | Italy | Germany

Several women enter a science fiction author’s life over the course of a few years, after the author has lost the woman he considers his one true love.

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Leif Sylvester, Anne Sørensen
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Denmark | UK

Tonny is released from prison – again. This time he has his mind set on changing his broken down life, but that is easier said than done.

Director: Cédric Kahn
Stars: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: France

Antoine and Helene drive to South France to return their kids from a holiday camp. The traffic is dense and the atmosphere growingly tense; he is an alcoholic and becomes increasingly drunk the more often they stop. After a fierce discussion they split and both have to face great danger during the night.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Béatrice Dalle
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: France | Canada | UK

After she ends up in prison and loses custody of her son, a woman struggles to assimilate outside her former life and remain clean long enough to regain custody of her son.

Director: Agnès Jaoui
Stars: Marilou Berry, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Agnès Jaoui
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: France | Italy

A french girl gifted with a great voice, has a complex about her weight and her appearance.

Director: Nobuhiro Doi
Stars: Yûko Takeuchi, Shidô Nakamura, Akashi Takei
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Japan

A young woman returns from the dead to her guilt-ridden husband and son, but she cannot remember them.

Director: Kirby Dick
Stars: Jeff Anderson, Barbara Blaine, David Clohessy
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A man confronts the trauma of past sexual abuse as a boy by a Catholic priest only to find his decision shatters his relationships with his family, community and faith.

Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: Alex Etel, James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: UK

Ethics, being human and the soul come to the fore when a 7-year old finds a bag of Pounds just days before the currency is switched to Euros and learns what we are really made of.

Director: Lisandro Alonso
Stars: Argentino Vargas, Francisco Dornez, Yolanda Galarza
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | France | Netherlands | Switzerland

Vargas, a 54 year old man, gets out of jail in the prvince of Corrientes, Argentina. Once released, he wants to find his now adult daughter, who lives in a swampy and remote area. To get there, he must cross great distances in a small boat on the rivers, scoring deep into the jungle. Vargas is a quiet and self-contained man. He possesses the restraint of those living close to nature. A deep mystery surrounds him, the people he encounters and the places he goes through, all that taking in the unalterable world he finds almost unchanged after his long years of incarceration.

Director: Shola Lynch
Stars: Shirley Chisholm, Walter Cronkite, George Wallace
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on Brooklyn-based Congresswoman Shirley’s Chisholm’s 1972 presidential bid.

Director: Jessica Sharzer
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Perkins, Richard Hagerman
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

After a blurred trauma over the summer, Melinda enters high school a selective mute. Struggling with school, friends, and family, she tells the dark tale of her experiences, and why she has chosen not to speak.

Director: Jorge Gaggero
Stars: Norma Aleandro, Norma Argentina, Marcos Mundstock
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Spain

A wealthy woman and her live-in housekeeper must adjust their entrenched routine and relationship when Buenos Aires is plunged into economic crisis.

Director: Frédéric Fonteyne
Stars: Emmanuelle Devos, Clovis Cornillac, Laura Smet
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium | France | Luxembourg | Italy | Switzerland

Gilles’ wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she weeps. She decides on a strategy to keep him. Will she succeed?

Director: Andrés Wood
Stars: Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Manuela Martelli
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Chile | Spain | UK | France

Two 12-year-old Chilean children from different social classes become friends in 1973. They both discover each other’s world as political tensions in their country increase.

Director: Fatih Akin
Stars: Birol Ünel, Sibel Kekili, Güven Kiraç
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Germany | Turkey

With the intention to break free from the strict familial restrictions, a suicidal young woman sets up a marriage of convenience with a forty-year-old addict, an act that will lead to an outburst of envious love.

Director: Jan Hrebejk
Stars: Petr Forman, Emília Vásáryová, Jan Tríska
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic

The discovery of an abandoned child by two smugglers kicks into a gear a series of tragic, comic events.

Director: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy
Stars: Yuriy Laguta, Marina Vovchenko, Sergey Shnurov
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Russia | Netherlands

Meat merchant Oleg, prostitute Marina, and piano tuner “simply Volodya” drop into an all-night bar in Moscow, where they are served by a narcoleptic bartender (three plus one is four) while each regales the others with made-up biographies. Oleg claims to work in President Putin’s administration, supplying him with bottled water and his wife with liquor; Marina passes herself off as a marketing executive; and Volodya, the infamous lead singer of the rock group Leningrad, as a geneticist who clones twins (two times two makes four, again) in a laboratory that has been engaged in these experiments since the days of Stalin. After they separate, these fantasy realities, especially Volodya’s, begin to dominate their everyday lives.

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Stars: Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, Aditya Srivastav
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: India

A film about the investigations following the 1993 serial Bombay bomb blasts, told through the different stories of the people involved –police, conspirators, victims, middlemen.

Director: Stephen Chow
Stars: Stephen Chow, Wah Yuen, Qiu Yuen
Genre: Action, Comedy, Fantasy
Country: Hong Kong | China | USA

In Shanghai, China in the 1940s, a wannabe gangster aspires to join the notorious “Axe Gang” while residents of a housing complex exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.

Director: Christian Bauer
Stars: Michael Hanrahan, Werner Angress, Victor Brombert
Genre: Documentary, History, War
Country: Canada | Germany

During WWII, the U.S. formed an elite intelligence unit — mostly German Jewish academics — at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Tasked with devising ways to break the morale of the SS, these men are often credited with bringing an early end to the war. Some of these heroes, who are now in the eighties, are reunited in this documentary.

Director: Jun Ichikawa
Stars: Issei Ogata, Rie Miyazawa, Shinohara Takahumi
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

When technical illustrator Tony Takitani asks his wife to resist her all-consuming obsession for designer clothes, the consequences are tragic.

Director: István Szabó
Stars: Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Maury Chaykin
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Canada | USA | Hungary | UK

Set in 1930s London, this movie involves stage actors and actresses and their experiences with love and revenge.

Director: Ernie Barbarash
Stars: Zachary Bennett, Stephanie Moore, Martin Roach
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Canada

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

Director: Gregg Araki
Stars: Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elisabeth Shue
Genre: Drama
Country: USA | Netherlands

A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.

Director: Ousmane Sembene
Stars: Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Salimata Traoré
Genre: Drama
Country: Senegal | Burkina Faso | Morocco | Tunisia | Cameroon | France

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.

Director: Marzieh Makhmalbaf
Stars: Gol-Ghotai, Zahed, Agheleh Rezaie
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran | France | Afghanistan

The story of survival of 2 children in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Their mother has been imprisoned for “adultery” and their father is in Guantanamo Bay.

Director: Marie Nyreröd
Stars: Ingmar Bergman, Erland Josephson, Marie Nyreröd
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Norway | Finland

All three documentaries were mainly shot in the home of Ingmar Bergman. This was the first time ever that a filmmaker had access to Ingmar Bergman in his home at the small island Fårö in the Baltic Sea. ‘Bergman and Cinema’ starts with “Frenzy” from 1944 and ends with “Saraband” from 2003. It contains unique behind-the-scenes material from Bergman’s private archive. ‘Bergman and Theatre’ is about some of Bergman’s 125 theatrical stagings and about his delight with the TV medium, with successes as “Scenes from a Marriage”. In ‘Bergman and Fårö Island’ he talks about the childhood that shaped him. He shows where he shot his film “Persona” and fell in love – and he lists his worst demons.

Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Romance
Country: France | Germany | Italy

A hard-working young man meets and falls in love with his sister’s bridesmaid. He soon finds out how disturbed she really is.

Director: Lucrecia Martel
Stars: Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Italy | Netherlands | Spain

16-year-old Amalia looks to save the soul of a middle-aged doctor.

Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Stars: Soran Ebrahim, Avaz Latif, Saddam Hossein Feysal
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Iran | France | Iraq

Near the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Stars: Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Spain | France | Italy

The factual story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a thirty-year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die.

Director: Agnès Varda
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: France

From legendary French New Wave director Agnès Varda, a triptych of short documentary films exploring the power and vitality of the photograph. Each film separated by 20 years, from her first documentary in the early 60s, through a doc from the early 80s, to her most recent.

Director: Jim Butterworth, Aaron Lubarsky, Lisa Sleeth
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The gripping documentary exposé into the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China.

Director: Chris Marker
Stars: Samir Khader, Josh Rushing, George W. Bush
Genre: Documentary
Country: France

Paris 2002. Yellow cats appears on the walls. Chris Marker is looking for these mysterious cats and captures with his camera the political and international events of these last two years (war in Iraq…).

Director: Jehane Noujaim
Stars: Samir Khader, Josh Rushing, George W. Bush
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on perception of the United States’s war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera’s coverage.

Director: Patrice Leconte
Stars: Sandrine Bonnaire, Fabrice Luchini, Michel Duchaussoy
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: France

A Frenchwoman tells her marital troubles to a man she mistakes for a psychiatrist, and soon they form an unusual relationship.

Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Stars: Zoé Auclair, Lea Bridarolli, Bérangère Haubruge
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: Belgium | France | UK | Japan

A look inside an offbeat boarding school for young girls.

Director: Woody Allen
Stars: Will Ferrell, Vinessa Shaw, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Two alternating stories, one comedy and the other tragedy, about Melinda’s attempts to straighten out her life.

Director: Walter Salles
Stars: Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mía Maestro
Genre: Adventure, Biography, Drama
Country: Argentina | USA | Chile | Peru | Brazil | UK | Germany | France

The dramatization of a motorcycle road trip Che Guevara went on in his youth that showed him his life’s calling.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Rony Kramer
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Switzerland

An indictment of modern times divided into three “kingdoms”: “Enfer” (“Hell”), “Purgatoire” (“Purgatory”) and “Paradis” (“Paradise”).

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Stars: Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Director: Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer
Stars: Sonny Bono, John Waters, Norm Niver
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Renowned cult film director John Waters narrates this quirky exploration of the Salton Sea, the massive Southern California lake that was created by accident a century ago, became a popular desert resort and has since developed into a refuge for a community of oddballs.

Director: Deb Ellis, Denis Mueller
Stars: Matt Damon, Daniel Berrigan, Howard Zinn
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The life and times of Howard Zinn: the historian, activist, and author of several classics including “A Peoples History of the United States”. Archival footage, and commentary by friend, colleagues and Zinn himself.

Director: Matt Mahurin
Stars: Michael Fishman, John A. Papa, Eve Shopsin
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

This bitingly funny comedy follows a prickly, profanity-prone man seeking to preserve his dream; it dishes up bites of wisdom along the way, ultimately serving both a hilarious trip and a charming slice of New York history.

Director: Gianni Amelio
Stars: Kim Rossi Stuart, Andrea Rossi, Charlotte Rampling
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | Germany | France | USA

Meeting his handicapped son for the first time, a young father attempts to forge a relationship with the teenager.

Director: Chuan Lu
Stars: Duobujie, Lei Zhang, Dao Qi
Genre: Action, Drama
Country: China | Hong Kong

A moving true story about volunteers protecting antelope against poachers in the severe mountains of Tibet.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Michelle Williams, John Diehl, Wendell Pierce
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | Germany | Canada

A drama that investigates anxiety and disillusionment in America.

Director: Yôji Yamada
Stars: Masatoshi Nagase, Takako Matsu, Hidetaka Yoshioka
Genre: Action, Drama, History
Country: Japan

A 19th Century samurai, held in low esteem due to an action by his late father, must resolve his history with a maid and with his close friend.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Stars: Toni Servillo, Olivia Magnani, Adriano Giannini
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy

An introverted man’s life changes completely when he finds himself attracted to a young bar-maid.

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Jodie Foster
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance
Country: France | USA

Tells the story of a young woman’s relentless search for her fiancé, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

An Eastern European tourist unexpectedly finds himself stranded in JFK airport, and must take up temporary residence there.

Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Stars: Emmanuelle Devos, Geoffrey Carey, Thierry Bosc
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France

Parallel storylines tell the current state of affairs for two ex-lovers: Nora’s a single mother who comes to care for her terminally ill father; holed in up in mental ward, Ismael, a brilliant musician, plots his escape.

Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Werner Herzog, Graham Dorrington, Dieter Plage
Genre: Documentary
Country: Germany | Japan | UK

About the daring adventure of exploring rain forest canopy with a novel flying device-the Jungle Airship. Airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his helium-filled invention above the tree-tops. But this logistic effort will not be without risk. Twelve years ago, a similar expedition into the unique habitat of the canopy ended in disaster when Dorrington’s friend Dieter Plage fell to his death. With the expedition is Werner Herzog, setting out now with a new prototype of the airship into the Lost World of the pristine rain forest of this little explored area of the world, to record and tell this unique story.

Director: Katy Chevigny, Kirsten Johnson
Stars: Anthony Amsterdam, Jeanne Bishop, Stephen Bright
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on Illinois Governor George Ryan, who, with 60 days left in office, makes a decision on the fate of death row prisoners.

Director: Jacques Richard
Stars: Henri Alekan, Catherine Allégret, Jo Amorin
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: France

Life and work of the founder of the Cinémathèque Française.

Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
Stars: Evelyn Glennie, Fred Frith, Roxane Butterfly
Genre: Documentary
Country: Germany | UK

A documentary which explores the connections among sound, rhythm, time, and the body by following percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who is nearly deaf.

Director: Mark Wexler
Stars: Haskell Wexler, Mark Wexler, Billy Crystal
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

The son of acclaimed cinematographer Haskell Wexler confronts his complex father by turning the camera on him. What results is a portrait of a difficult genius and a son’s path out of the shadow of a famous father.

Director: Hubert Sauper
Stars: Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Maganga Nsese, Raphael Tukiko Wagara, Dimond Remtulia
Genre: Documentary
Country: Austria | Belgium | France | Germany

A documentary on the effect of fishing the Nile perch in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria. The predatory fish, which has wiped out the native species, is sold in European supermarkets, while starving Tanzanian families have to make do with the leftovers.

Director: Lech Majewski
Stars: Claudine Spiteri, Chris Nightingale, Barry Chipperfield
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Italy | Poland

Based on his own novel Metaphysics, Lech Majewski crafts intimate passion plays and creates “a luminous, highly erotic treatise on art, love and death” (CHICAGO READER). When a terminally-ill art historian meets an engineer, it is love and lust at first sight. But their love is threatened by her looming illness. With her remaining days on earth numbered, she chooses to fan the flames of her obsession by taking her lover on a trip to Venice, where the artist’s work becomes the background for their physical passion and emotional discovery.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Sylvie Testud, Aurore Clément, Jean-Pierre Marielle
Genre: Comedy
Country: France | Belgium

Charlotte is single. She tries to write erotic books to survive without her mind being in the least absorbed by eroticism or desire.

Director: Katsuhito Ishii
Stars: Maya Banno, Takahiro Satô, Tadanobu Asano
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: Japan

A spell of time of a rural family’s slightly surreal life.

Director: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
Stars: Kochi, Avijit Halder, Shanti Das
Genre: Documentary, Biography, News
Country: USA

Two documentary filmmakers chronicle their time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city’s notorious red light district.

Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Stars: Alexandra Aidini, Nikos Poursanidis, Giorgos Armenis
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: Greece | France | Italy | Germany

This is the first film of Theo Angelopoulos’ trilogy. The story starts in 1919 with some greek refugees from Odessa arriving somewhere near Thessaloniki. Among these people are two small kids, Alexis and Eleni. Eleni is an orphan and she is also taken care by Alexis’ family. The refugees build a small village somewhere near a river and we watch as the kids grow up and fall in love. But difficult times of dictatorship and war are coming…

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh, Kar-Wai Wong
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Alan Arkin, Li Gong
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Italy | Hong Kong | France | Luxembourg | UK

Three short films, one each from Directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh, and Wong Kar Wai, address the themes of love and sex.

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Stars: Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Buddy Guy, Solomon Burke
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

Antoine Fuqua’s documentary on the blues, shot at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Director: Xan Cassavetes
Stars: Robert Altman, Vera Carlisle Anderson, C.L. Batten
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: USA

A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel’s eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.

Director: Yimou Zhang
Stars: Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: China | Hong Kong

A romantic police captain breaks a beautiful member of a rebel group out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.