Tag: Priority 4

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film by Stan Brakhage focusing on flashing light and photographic images.

Director: Xiaogang Feng
Stars: You Ge, Xiaogang Feng, Wei Chen
Genre: Comedy
Country: China

Four friends come up with an unusual idea to make some money and have fun doing it. For a small fee, they will impersonate and act out any character role for their customers. In the course of executing this novel service, they encounter a whole spectrum of people in society, finding ways to genuinely help them boost their morale and overcome their fears, while gaining unusual and new insights into the human condition.

Director: Paul Weiland
Stars: Jean Reno, Mercedes Ruehl, Polly Walker
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: USA | Italy

Roseanna is dying of a heart condition, and all she wants is to be buried next to her daughter, in a cemetery that is getting full fast. The cemetery can’t expand because Capestro, the man who owns the land next to the cemetery, won’t sell. While Marcello is doing good deeds to make sure no one dies, Roseanna thinks of Marcello’s future.

Director: Alan Rickman
Stars: Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson, Sheila Reid
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | USA

A recent widow, who is determined to leave Scotland for Australia with her son, gets an unexpected visit from her aging mother.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Traci Lind, Rosalind Chao, Bill Pullman
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: France | Germany | USA

Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max’s disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing in ongoing Max’s production.

Director: Bruno Dumont
Stars: David Douche, Marjorie Cottreel, Kader Chaatouf
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

A social movie about current life in the north of France. Freddy and his friends are all unemployed. They pass away time by wandering around on their motorcycles and by directing their aggressive feelings towards Arab immigrants. Freddy is in love with Marie, a cashier at a local supermarket. When she is proposed to by Kader, a young Arab man, Freddy and his friends have an idea: they decide to punish Kader for what they call “such a provocation.” After they have raped another girl, Marie finally commits to Kader, which seals his fate.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short by Stan Brakhage which combines and overlaps various lights, colors, and footage.

Director: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
Stars: Richard Salter, Christine Whittlesey, Annabelle Hahn
Genre: Music, Comedy
Country: France | Germany

It is late at night and a married couple has just returned home from a party, where they met a former school friend of the wife and a famous singer. The husband has been charmed by the seductive and elegant woman, and this makes him treat his wife, who has gone straight back to being a housewife, condescendingly. Talking about the evening, the husband praises the school friend’s beauty and intelligence. This makes his wife reveal the advances she received from the singer and the compliments he paid her; the man may be affected, but made her feel she was still desirable. When she realises her husband is jealous, the wife decides to teach him a lesson.

Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Yves Gautier, Leonor Silveira
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Portugal | France

Manoel is aging film director who travels with the film crew through Portugal in search of the origins of Afonso, a famous French actor whose father emigrated from Portugal to France and in process remembers his own youth.

Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Stars: Jonathan Pryce, James Wilby, Jonny Lee Miller
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK | Canada

Based on Pat Barker’s novel of the same name, ‘Regeneration’ tells the story of soldiers of World War One sent to an asylum for emotional troubles. Two of the soldiers meeting there are Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two of England’s most important WW1 poets.

Director: Shane Meadows
Stars: Bob Hoskins, Danny Nussbaum, Toby
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK

In a typical English working-class town, the juveniles have nothing more to do than hang around in gangs. One day, Alan Darcy, a highly motivated man with the same kind of youth experience, starts trying to get the young people off the street and into doing something they can believe in: Boxing. Soon he opens a training facility which is accepted gratefully by them and the gangs start to grow together into friends. Darcy manages to organize a public fight for them to prove what they have learned. A training camp with hiking tours into the mountains of Wales forge the group into a tight-knit club society. With the day of the fight drawing closer, the young boxers get more and more excited.

Director: Thom Fitzgerald
Stars: Chris Leavins, Kerry Fox, Ian Parsons
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Canada | UK

William, a once obese and depressed adolescent, is able to move past his teenage years when he moves to the city and comes out as being gay. When he returns home though, he can’t cope with his memories.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei
Genre: Drama, War
Country: UK | USA

Journalist Flynn from the U.S., Michael Henderson from the U.K., and their teams meet at the beginning of the Bosnian war in Sarajevo. During their reports, they find an orphanage run by the devoted Mrs. Savic near the frontline. Henderson gets so involved in the kids’ problems, that he decides to take one of the children, Emira, illegally back to England. He is assisted by American aid worker Nina.

Director: Peter Cattaneo
Stars: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | USA

Six unemployed steel workers form a male striptease act. The women cheer them on to go for “the full monty” – total nudity.

Director: Kevin Smith
Stars: Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan Suplee
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Holden and Banky are comic book artists. Everything’s going good for them until they meet Alyssa, also a comic book artist. Holden falls for her, but his hopes are crushed when he finds out she’s a lesbian.

Director: Agnieszka Holland
Stars: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Maggie Smith
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Catherine Sloper (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has found the man of her dreams in Morris Townsend (Ben Chaplin), but her plans to marry him are strongly opposed by her father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Albert Finney), who believes Townsend is only interested in his daughter for her money. But Catherine is determined to follow her heart, even if she loses her inheritance in the process. But just what are Townsend’s intentions?

Director: Julio Medem
Stars: Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Karra Elejalde
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Spain

Angel, an exterminator recently released from a mental hospital, comes to rid a small Spanish town of tiny grubs in the soil. The local wine-making industry has found these pests responsible for giving their product an “earthy” taste that has divided local opinion. While in town, Angel becomes involved with two beautiful and very different women, and impacts their lives on a grand scale. Can either of these women accept the fact that Angel travels with a “ghost” of himself, or that he routinely speaks with the deseased townspeople?

Director: John Greyson
Stars: Ian D. Clark, Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio
Genre: Crime, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Canada

When a bishop comes to a prison to hear the confession of an old friend he is forced to watch a play, performed by the inmates, about their youth together, love and betrayal.

Director: James Lapine
Stars: Donna Murphy, Jere Shea, Marin Mazzie
Genre: Drama, Musical, Romance
Country: USA

In 19th century Italy, a young soldier becomes shattered by the obsessive love of Fosca, his Colonel’s homely, ailing cousin.

Director: Uli Edel
Stars: Alan Rickman, Greta Scacchi, Ian McKellen
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA | Hungary

HBO biopic about the infamous “mad monk” Rasputin from the court of Czar Nicholas II in Russia.

Director: Santosh Sivan
Stars: Benaf Dadachandji, Rajkumar Santoshi, Sahil Choujar
Genre: Drama, Family
Country: India

The story revolves around a seven-year-old girl, Sasha (Benaf Dadachandji), who looses her puppy. It is about her search and the variety of people she meets.

Director: Bille August
Stars: Maria Bonnevie, Ulf Friberg, Pernilla August
Genre: Drama
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Norway | Finland | Iceland

The beginning of the 20th century. Gertrud and Ingmar are in love with each other. While Ingmar is away during the winter, a religious wave spreads in the area. Also Gertrud becomes a follower of the new Christian belief. The new priest is very mesmerizing and he wants his followers to emigrate with him to Palestine. Ingmar’s sister decides to follow him and sells the home which has been the family’s for centuries. The only way for Ingmar to save it is to marry the daughter of the man who buys it, Barbro. With Ingmar married to another, Gertrud cannot stay and follows the others to Palestine. However, Ingmar does not love Barbro. He is still in love with Gertrud and eventually follows her.

Director: Stephen Frears
Stars: Colm Meaney, Donal O’Kelly, Ger Ryan
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | Ireland | USA

Set in the fictional Dublin suburb of Barrytown, Bimbo is a baker who loses his job after being made redundant. Bimbo then acquires the help of his best friend, Larry, to set up a successful burger van.

Director: Satoshi Isaka
Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Keiko Unno, Akira Hirai
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan

A small and intrusive reporting crew are reporting on the actions of a man who monitors transmissions in a documentary they are filming. When suddenly a weapon is introduced the nerd and the events turn tupsy turvy and the results are not sublime.

Director: Leon Ichaso
Stars: René Lavan, Mayte Vilán, Miguel Gutiérrez
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Dominican Republic | USA

Gustavo is a young Havana Communist who believes in the revolution; he hopes for a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering in Prague. But his faith in the new Cuba is tested: his father, a psychiatrist, can make four times as much playing piano at a hotel for foreigners; his sweetheart, Yolanda, wants a career as a dancer and longs for the riches of Miami; his younger brother Bobby simply wants to play rock music, and as a result is in constant trouble with the authorities. When Bobby takes a shocking step of revolt and Gustavo is refused service at a foreigners-only bar, the contradictions in his resolve to become a “new man” push him to the breaking point.

Director: Zvonimir Maycug
Stars: Miran Javorovic, Vedrana Likan, Roswitha Mir
Genre: Drama
Country: Croatia

A traveling accordionist and superintendent of an old castle lives in an unhappy marriage, with a grown up daughter and has a sister-in-law who has been in love with him for years. During a trip, he meets young journalist (Mato Pavelic)and falls madly in love. His visit to the old castle tears the family apart, resulting in tragedy.

Director: Sharunas Bartas
Stars: Alex Descas, Yekaterina Golubeva, Piotr Kishteev
Genre: Drama
Country: Portugal | France | Germany | Lithuania

Silent Lithuanian film about a woman visiting a Fayre.

Director: Ulrich Seidl
Stars: Ernst Schönmann, Franz Holzschuh, Erich Wögerer
Genre: Documentary
Country: Austria

In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.

Director: Kôhei Oguri
Stars: Sung-Ki Ahn, Christine Hakim, Jun Hamamura
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Ever since an accident in the mountains outside town, Takuji’s slept in a coma; his neighbors care for him as new events occur every day.

Director: Theo van Gogh
Stars: Renée Fokker, Peer Mascini, Roeland Fernhout
Genre: Drama
Country: Netherlands

A bartender watches with amusement as two strangers meet and duel verbally in his bar. Katya, a former dancer, is trying to forget the death of her young daughter. Pom, a comedian known for his verbal thrust and parry, tries to charm, shock and disgust his date in turn.

Director: Chris Smith
Stars: Randy Russell, Matt Collier, Ed English
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

American Job is a narrative film about Randy Scott, a youth caught in the dismal confusion of living and working in the world of minimum wage. American Job follows main character Randy Scott through a number of low wage jobs: factory worker, fast food dishwasher, third shift inventory specialist, motel room custodian and telemarketer. We live with Randy through these jobs and witness the pain, absurdity and sheer boredom of minimum wage work.

Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Stars: John Malkovich, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Gottfried John
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany | France | UK

Frenchman Abel Tiffauges likes children, and wants to protect them against the grown-ups. Falsely suspected as child molester, he’s recruited as a soldier in the 2nd World War, but very soon he is taken prisoner of war. After shortly serving in Goerings hunting lodge, he becomes the dogsbody in Kaltenborn Castle, an elite training camp for German boys. Completely happy to take care of these children, he becomes a servant of Nazism, catching boys from the area as supplies for the camp.

Director: Robert Lepage
Stars: Patrick Goyette, Marie Brassard, Peter Stormare
Genre: Crime
Country: Canada | France | Germany

Lucie Champagne is given the role of the victim, Marie-Claire, in a film of a true, unsolved murder. By coincidence, Lucie’s neighbour Francois, was Marie-Claire’s boyfriend. He is a suspect in the continuing investigation and is unsure of his own innocence although he has an alibi from his previous girlfriend, Claude. Francois’ polygraph (lie detector) test proves inconclusive and while he awaits his second test, Lucie’s film is completed with its own ideas on who killed Marie-Claire.

Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Stars: Shaghayeh Djodat, Hossein Moharami, Rogheih Moharami
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance
Country: Iran | France

When an old couple washes their gabbeh – a type of Persian rug – a young woman magically appears and tells them her life story.

Director: Kelly Makin
Stars: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald
Genre: Comedy
Country: Canada | USA

A pharmaceutical scientist creates a pill that makes people remember their happiest memory, and although it’s successful, it has unfortunate side effects.

Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte
Genre: Crime, Drama, Music
Country: France | USA

A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.

Director: Tata Amaral
Stars: Paulo Vespúcio, Leona Cavalli, Lígia Cortez
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil

Dalva, a young hairdresser, is leaving for Miami to receive a prize. Her journey is interrupted, when her former boyfriend, Victor, makes her a captive in her own house.

Director: Denys Arcand
Stars: Lorne Brass, Gaston Lepage, Benoît Brière
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

In Montreal, the wanderings of two urban homeless, Marcel, an old timer and Joseph, who just landed in the big city. Both philosophers and resourceful nice bums roam the streets of the metropolis in search of Stanley, the only friend of Marcel and who has not been heard of since a long time. Throughout their adventures, the two men forged an unbreakable friendship. Will they find Stanley before it’s too late?

Director: Franco Piavoli
Stars: Patrizio Girardi, Emanuela Cobelli, Laura Carnevali
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy

Semi-documentary without comment portraying Castellaro Lagusello, a small town in Northern Italy.

Director: Dirk Rijneke
Stars: Ari de Weerd
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Netherlands

Where Joris Ivens realized his ‘study of mechanical movement’ in 1928, the bridge keeper of the Koningshaven Hefbrug now thrones high above the city and the river, passing his last working days.

Director: Coline Serreau
Stars: Coline Serreau, Vincent Lindon, James Thierrée
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

The “Green Planet” belongs to another solar system. Through the simplicity of their lifestyle those who live there are a real step ahead of us: they spend their time concentrating their knowledge, strength and energy on the development of their minds and bodies in a natural environment which they dearly preserve and care for. Once a year, they gather in the crater of a dormant volcano to decide which planets they ought to send messengers to. There are volunteers for every planet except Earth, which is considered too polluted and too dangerous. One woman alone, Mila, decides to go there to seek out her identity, as Osam the old sage has revealed to her that she was conceived there during a previous trip by her father.

Director: Jim Klein
Stars: Jim Klein, Renee Montagne, Bradford Snell
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

How the American auto industry engineered the demise of city public-transit systems.

Director: Francisco J. Lombardi
Stars: José Luis Ruiz Barahona, Ana Risueño, Diego Bertie
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain | Peru | Germany

Passion, criminal instincts an traditions melt together in this film, that shakes our conception of crime.

Director: Trevor Nunn
Stars: Helena Bonham Carter, Richard E. Grant, Imogen Stubbs
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Ireland | UK

Shakespeare’s comedy of gender confusion, in which a girl disguises herself as a man to be near the count she adores, only to be pursued by the woman he loves.

Director: Vladimír Michálek
Stars: Bolek Polívka, Veronika Zilková, Petr Kavan
Genre: Drama
Country: Czech Republic

Father Holy, a village priest, battles against the state and religious bureaucracies of 1980s Czechoslovakia in his fight to raise money for a new church roof. Permeated by his love for the villagers, his encounters are marked by his good humor. In his losing battle against Church and State, Holy is ordered to be transferred away from his parish and his allies. The Czech-American, Milena Jelinek, adapted this moving story from the the novel The Forgotten Light, by the 1930s Czech writer/poet and Catholic priest Jakub Deml.

Director: Murilo Salles
Stars: Priscila Assum, Silvio Guindane, Larry Pine
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil

Two children flee together with a grown up from a slum in Rio because this older person has had problems with the local drug lord. They end up in the house where a rich American lives with his daughter.

Director: Heddy Honigmann
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: Netherlands

A documentary on Brazil’s relationship with the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and to their own sexuality.

Director: Alejandro Agresti
Stars: Vera Fogwill, Nicolás Pauls, Fernán Mirás
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Argentina | Netherlands

This is Buenos Aires, its characters, its history, its reality. A complex movie for a complex city, depicted in the character’s language, and in their relationship with the present and the past. This is a story of contrasts, offered by a despair choir of characters: the old couple who hire a young woman to record city’s present images, because they “don’t get out much now”, the boy who finds out the real story about his parents out of a coincidence… this and the others are all illustrations of actual Buenos Aires.

Director: Yôichi Higashi
Stars: Mieko Harada, Keigo Matsuyama, Shogo Matsuyama
Genre: Drama, Family, Fantasy
Country: Japan

Tells of the childhood of nine-year-old twins in a rural village in Japan after World War 2. Includes the boys’ relationships with their schoolteacher mother, civil servant father, elderly landlord, a rough new boy at the school, and three mysterious spirits in the form of old women.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Juliette Binoche, William Hurt, Stephanie Buttle
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: France | Germany | Belgium

A psychoanalyst in NYC exchanges apartment with a woman in Paris. When his patients show up, they talk to her and then pay. He returns early to NYC and becomes a patient.

Director: Sergei Bodrov
Stars: Oleg Menshikov, Sergey Bodrov, Susanna Mekhraliyeva
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Russia | Kazakhstan

Two Russian soldiers, one battle-seasoned and the other barely into his boots and uniform, are taken prisoner by an anxious Islamic father from a remote village hoping to trade them for his captured son.

Director: Jane Campion
Stars: Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK | USA

An American girl inherits a fortune and falls into a misguided relationship with a gentleman confidence artist whose true nature, including a barbed and covetous disposition, turns her life into a nightmare.

Director: Lee Lew Lee
Stars: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Dennis Banks, Marlon Brando
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

This four hour documentary looks for the exotic in the everyday life observed in just one city, the filmmaker’s own Amsterdam.

Director: Didier Le Pêcheur
Stars: Marie Trintignant, Maria de Medeiros, Christian Charmetant
Genre: Comedy
Country: France | Portugal

When novelist Alessandro Battavia commits suicide, a taxi driver named Evangile and her brother Nord believe they are characters imagined in a novel, probably one written by God. Because they see their lives as “merde,” they go in search of God to get their story rewritten. Along the way, believing everything is imaginary anyway, they shoot people, rob pharmacies, and tie up the residents of places they squat. They also gather a taxi full of eccentrics, including a priest, Battavia’s suicidal widow, and a policewoman; various couples pair off. Soon life imitates art: the events and ellipses seem lifted from modern fiction as the group’s quest for God continues. What’s real?

Director: Carlos da Silva, George Sluizer
Stars: Diogo Infante, Maria d’Aires, Huub Stapel
Genre: Comedy
Country: Portugal | Netherlands

A Portuguese immigrant in Holland dies in an accident and is buried in a cemetery in Amsterdam. Soon he discovers that his soul won’t rest in peace until his body is laying down in his fatherland. This way he decides to go to Portugal to convince his sister to travel to Amsterdam and bring back his body. The only problem is that the only way for him to be seen or heard by the living is appearing in their dreams.

Director: Édouard Molinaro
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Manuel Blanc, Sandrine Kiberlain
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, History
Country: France

The life story of the titular Beaumarchais, playwright and adventurer, who gets himself into numerous different scrapes and romantic encounters in 18th Century France.

Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Stars: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, Emmanuel Salinger
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France

Paul Dedalus is at a crossroads in his life. He has to make several decisions; should he complete his doctorate, does he want to become a full professor, does he really love his long-standing girlfriend, or should he re-start with one of his other lovers? Is he avoiding the despairing life his father can’t escape from ?

Director: Mira Nair
Stars: Naveen Andrews, Sarita Choudhury, Indira Varma
Genre: Crime, Drama, History
Country: USA | India | UK | Japan | Germany

Two female friends become sexual rivals at maturity.

Director: Phil Davis
Stars: Reece Dinsdale, Richard Graham, Perry Fenwick
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Germany | UK

When a cop goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of hooligans, he finds himself being drawn to the other side.

Director: Larry Clark
Stars: Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Chloë Sevigny
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

Director: Tony Gatlif
Stars: Ovidiu Balan, Philippe Petit, Pierrette Fesch
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Mondo is a homeless young boy, with a big smile, who wanders around Nice looking for food and a place to sleep.

Director: Cheol-su Park
Stars: Eun-jin Pang, Sin-hye Hwang, Chu-Ryun Kim
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: South Korea

Two women, a chef and an anorexic writer, are neighbors in an apartment building. The chef (301) tries to entice her neighbor to eat with fabulous meals. The writer (302) refuses to eat, and this refusal begins a turbulent relationship that forces both women to delve into their pasts of torment.

Director: Peter Mullan
Stars: Gary Lewis, Vicki Masson, Laurie Ventry
Genre: Short, Thriller
Country: UK

In a squalid tenement building in Glasgow, two toughs lock a helpless young boy inside a broken fridge-freezer.

Director: Maurice Pialat
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Géraldine Pailhas, Antoine Pialat
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Antoine is four years old. His father Gerard leaves his mother Sophie. Gerard has several mistresses, but never knows how to leave them. Sophie takes a new lover, Jeannot.

Director: Carlos Saura
Stars: La Paquera de Jerez, Merche Esmeralda, Manolo Sanlúcar
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: Spain

As a hall fills with performers, a narrator says that flamenco came from Andalucia, a mix of Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Castillian ballads, Jewish laments, Gregorian chants, African rhythms, and Iranian and Romany melodies. The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba. Families present numbers, both festive and fierce. The camera and the other performers are the only audience.

Director: Mel Gibson
Stars: Mel Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA

Scottish warrior William Wallace leads his countrymen in a rebellion to free his homeland from the tyranny of King Edward I of England.

Director: Brian Springer
Stars: Larry Agran, Jim Bakker, Bill Beutel
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contemptuous plans for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV out-takes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly spun fabric of television, a system which silences public debates and furthers the intolerance of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. rebellion and the floating TV talk-show called the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

Director: Susanne Ofteringer
Stars: Nico, Tina Aumont, Christian Päffgen
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Music
Country: Germany | USA

A look into the many lives of Christa Päffgen, otherwise known as Nico; from cutie German mädchen to the first of the supermodels, to glamorous diva of the Velvet Underground, to cult item, junkie and hag. Many faces for the same woman, whom, you realize, just couldn’t bring herself to care enough to live.

Director: Benoît Jacquot
Stars: Virginie Ledoyen, Benoît Magimel, Dominique Valadié
Genre: Drama
Country: France

One morning Valerie has to tell her unemployed boyfriend Remi that she is pregnant. She has decided to keep the child, but they argue whether they should break up or not. That same day she starts working in room service at a smart hotel.

Director: Terence Davies
Stars: Jacob Tierney, Drake Bell, Gena Rowlands
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Spain

While on a train, a teenage boy thinks about his life and the flamboyant aunt whose friendship acted as an emotional shield from his troubled family. This film evokes the haunting quality of memory while creating a heartfelt portrait of a boy’s life in a rural 1940s Southern town.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Robert Carlyle, Juliet Aubrey, James Nesbitt
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: UK

Nick, is a young Scottish soccer player living in the big city. He meets Karen, and the two fall in love and move in together. Soon after, Nick exhibits signs of serious illness. As his body slowly succumbs to multiple sclerosis, he experiences a wide sweep of jagged emotions, and in the process gives himself and those who love him the strength to carry on.

Director: Amy Heckerling
Stars: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: USA

Shallow, rich and socially successful Cher is at the top of her Beverly Hills high school’s pecking scale. Seeing herself as a matchmaker, Cher first coaxes two teachers into dating each other.

Director: Mircea Daneliuc
Stars: Dorel Visan, Cecilia Bârbora, Clara Voda
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania

In a small Romanian village, a senator goes through hilarious events as he takes advantage of the people’s hospitality while also ignoring their major issues.

Director: Kwang-su Park
Stars: Kyoung-In Hong, In-gi Jeong, Bo-kyeong Kim
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea

The film intercuts two stories, one in black and white, one in color. From 1965 to 1970, we follow Jeon Tae-Il, a poor young man who quits street vending to work in a garment factory. Amid appalling work conditions, he buys a law book, seeks government help, forms an association, talks to reporters. When conditions don’t change, he takes a dire step. Five years later, a young couple follow Tae-Il’s path: pregnant Shin Jung-Soon tries to organize a union in her garment factory. She’s harassed, then beaten. Her husband, Kim Yong-Su, an intellectual in hiding from Park Chung Hee’s repressive regime, is writing Tae-Il’s story. Can he elude capture to complete the book?

Director: Charles Matthau
Stars: Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

After his mother’s death, Collin Fenwick goes to live with his father’s cousins, the wealthy, avaricious, and controlling Verena Talbo, and her compliant, earthy sister Dolly. When a city slicker comes to town and convinces Verena to market Dolly’s locally-famous tonic, Dolly finally gets some backbone, refuses to divulge the formula, and heads for a tree house with Collin and Catherine, the loyal maid. Verena, who has most of the town in her pocket, sics the law on the renegades. Dolly, Catherine, and Collin find a supporter in a retired judge, Charlie Cool, who’s attracted to Dolly. Will Verena’s venom win out? And what about that city slicker?

Director: Richard Loncraine
Stars: Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Christopher Bowen
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, War
Country: UK

The classic Shakespearean play about the murderously scheming 15th-century king is reimagined in an alternative setting of 1930s England as clouds of fascism gather.

Director: Fei Xie
Stars: Dalarsurong, Aojirdai, Bayirtcya
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | China

Bayinbulag and Somiya are brought up, from a young age, as brother and sister by their adoptive grandmother. The three live happily in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes. Just before Bayinbulag is to leave for the city, to be trained as a vet, the grandmother suggests that Bayinbulag and Somiya should eventually marry. Bayinbulag, now training to be a musician, stays away for long periods of time without communicating with Somiya. He finally comes back expecting to marry her.

Director: Robert Ménard
Stars: David La Haye, Marie-France Monette, Gilbert Sicotte
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

A small plane crashes in the Caribbean, leaving only two survivors: a precocious teenage girl and a simple-minded grown-up. They end up on a desert island, with no inhabitants and no rescue in sight, and split. Then, a friendship bond develops between the two. The teenager, realizing she may not live long enough to see this experience, and the grown-up, never faced with this reality, soon fall in love.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Kenny Bee, Leslie Cheung, Anita Yuen
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: Hong Kong

Kit is a gangster looking to start a new life as a chef in Canada, so he can be closer to his girlfriend. But in his struggle to learn the fine art of cuisine, he runs across a red-headed beauty who will change his plans, and soon finds himself off in search of the retired master who can teach him how to win in the ultimate cooking challenge.

Director: Joseph Vilsmaier
Stars: André Eisermann, Dana Vávrová, Ben Becker
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: Germany

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an “acoustic wonder”, his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds. Elias falls in platonic love with Elsbeth, the sister of Peter, a neighbor’s son, who has longstanding homosexual feelings towards Elias.

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A former cop turned street-hustler accidentally uncovers a conspiracy in Los Angeles in 1999.

Director: Jin Xie
Stars: Wei Zhao, La-La Chiu, Tsui-Wan Lee
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: China

This is a story about seven female prisoners each with different backgrounds, living within the one prison. At the beginning of the story, a new inmate Ding Qing Er arrives with tears streaming down her face, but told that it’s too late to cry. The story continues to slowly reveal the lives of the female prisoners, and each of their struggles to have ended up where they are today.

Director: Charles Burnett
Stars: Ayuko Babu, Florence Bracy, Kenny Merritt
Genre: Short, Drama, Music
Country: USA

A musician spends New Year’s Day trying to help his friend pay the rent.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Nicky Wu, Charlie Yeung, Eric Kot
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Hong Kong

Like many young people of the 1920s, Kong and Yan are infected with the “happily ever after” syndrome waiting for their perfect match. Unlike other love stories, this couple journeys through murder, ghostly spirits and true sacrifice all in the name of love.

Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Michael Maloney, Richard Briers, Hetta Charnley
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK

A group of theater actors plays “Hamlet” in a provincial village, faced with their own temptations, disappointments, and joys.

Director: Gorcin Stojanovic
Stars: Branka Katic, Nebojsa Glogovac, Ana Sofrenovic
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Men, women, and war. Jelena Panic is a young woman in Belgrade in the early 1990s, during Serbia’s war with Croatia; she’s making a book of her grandmother’s diaries from the end of World War II. She takes up with Bogden, a young soldier recovering from war wounds. He helps her with her grandmother’s story, a tragic triangle involving her effete and well-educated husband and an uneducated major, a Chekist who has, perhaps, the power to save a political prisoner who is the grandmother’s friend. As Jelena wonders which man was her grandfather (the Chekist or the husband), Bogden recovers from his wounds and must decide whether to return to the front. Jelena pleads; duty calls.

Director: Agnès Varda
Stars: Michel Piccoli, Marcello Mastroianni, Henri Garcin
Genre: Comedy, History, Romance
Country: UK | France

Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Stars: Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller
Country: USA

A mobster travels to Hollywood to collect a debt, and discovers that the movie business is much the same as his current job.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Poland

An emotionless and offish portrait of the Warsaw Central Railway Station, a flagship development of PZPR in the seventies.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Stefan Barber, Wiebke Bayer, Nadine Büttner
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Germany

A rare gem of cinematic storytelling that weaves docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography into a powerful, reflective work on the early days of German cinema. The film tells the story of the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the “bioskop”, an early version of the film projector.

Director: Mort Ransen
Stars: Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Nelligan, Clive Russell
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada | UK

Margaret MacNiel, a girl living in a Cape Breton coal mining town, finds her life changing when she meets Neil Currie, a cheerful bagpipe-playing dishwasher. Unfortunately, neither of them are able to escape the industry around them.

Director: Jeffrey Lau
Stars: Stephen Chow, Man-Tat Ng, Athena Chu
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Country: Hong Kong

The convoluted continuation of the adventures of the time-traveling, now-human Monkey King, who attempts to fulfill his divine destiny.

Director: Ralph Ziman
Stars: Danny Keogh, Patrick Shai, Seputla Sebogodi
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: South Africa

Set when the apartheid government was still in control, this powerful South African thriller is based on the true story of a policeman belonging to an elite government squad who was assigned to masquerade as a supporter and infiltrate the African National Congress so he could assassinate their leaders. Fourie is the cop, and his squadron is the most notoriously racist unit of the S.A. police force; they were infamous for donning street clothes, putting on blackface make up, and driving around in unmarked cars to kill people and cause trouble to encourage fighting amongst rival groups. Although the ANC members are initially suspicious of Fourie, eventually they accept him and send him to be trained in Lusaka, Zambia and other places. They even send him to Moscow where he learns about Marxist philosophies. By the time Fourie completes all that training the conflict has ended, Mandela is released, and his squadron has split up and melted into the general populace.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Ryszard Dembinski, Jerzy Fedorowicz, Ewa Konarska
Genre: Short, Drama
Country: Poland

A young couple leave a lake campsite on motorbike at the same time as a bus full of youths. The boy accidently loses a tent along the road which is picked up by those in the bus who offer a trade of the tent for his girl.

Director: Krzysztof Wierzbicki
Stars: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jacek Petrycki, Krzysztof Wierzbicki
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: Poland | Denmark

Director/Writer Krzysztof Kieslowski shares his views on life, people, politics and comments a little about some of his films in a very casual conversation.

Director: Mark Rappaport
Stars: Mary Beth Hurt, Jean Seberg
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

Mark Rappaport’s creative bio-pic about actress Jean Seberg is presented in a first-person, autobiographical format (with Seberg played by Mary Beth Hurt). He seamlessly interweaves cinema, politics, American society and culture, and film theory to inform, entertain, and move the viewer. Seberg’s many marriages, as well as her film roles, are discussed extensively. Her involvement with the Black Panther Movement and subsequent investigation by the FBI is covered. Notably, details of French New Wave cinema, Russian Expressionist (silent) films, and the careers of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Clint Eastwood are also intensively examined. Much of the film is based on conjecture, but Rappaport encourages viewers to re-examine their ideas about women in film with this thought-provoking picture.

Director: Helena Solberg
Stars: Helena Solberg, Eric Barreto, Cynthia Adler
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Music
Country: UK | Brazil

A biography of the Portuguese-Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti frutti hat. She came to the US as the “Brazilian Bombshell” and was a Broadway and Hollywood star in the 1940s.

Director: Eliseo Subiela
Stars: Darío Grandinetti, Mariana Arias, Oscar Martínez
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Argentina

It is the fantastic story of a couple that has the chance to live for centuries loving one another because of various reincarnations.

Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi
Stars: Yoshinori Okada, Ayumi Hamasaki, Kouji Yamaguchi
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan

The movie is built around the very complex relationships between Yoshida, leaving Shimizu for Aihara (or at least he tries to), and his friend Ito, whose love for Yoshida seems to have little chance for success. In the end we have a coalition of Ito and Aihara – who may or may not be in love with Ito – teaching Yoshida a lesson.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Weiser Quay
Stars: Mark Rylance, Alice Krige, Gottfried John
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Japan | Germany

A young man goes to a school for servants run by a brother and sister. In the dreamlike and surreal world that he enters, how will his presence impact the people there and possibly even the school itself?

Director: Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Stars: Olivier Martinez, Juliette Binoche, Pierre Arditi
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: France

In a time of war and disease, a young officer gallantly tries to help a young woman find her husband.

Director: Jeffrey Lau
Stars: Stephen Chow, Man-Tat Ng, Kar-Ying Law
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Country: Hong Kong | China

Fantasy adventure about the arrival of Buddhism in China. When the Goddess of Happiness tosses the Longevity Monk and his disciples out of heaven (because the Monkey King tried to attain immortality), the Monkey King is reincarnated as the Joker. He now spends his time chasing two jealous women. When one of them is dying, the Joker goes back in time in an attempt to save her.

Director: Mamoru Oshii
Stars: Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Akio Ôtsuka
Genre: Animation, Action, Crime
Country: Japan | UK

A cyborg policewoman and her partner hunt a mysterious and powerful hacker called the Puppet Master.

Director: Rafal Zielinski
Stars: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Canada

Hillary and Bonnie meet one morning by the side of the road. They become fast friends, share their secrets, and on a rising wave of frenzy later that afternoon, murder an old woman. They did it, they say later, for fun.

Director: Kevin Smith
Stars: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

A day in the lives of two convenience clerks named Dante and Randal as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and play hockey on the store roof.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Nicky Wu, Charlie Yeung, Carrie Ng
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Hong Kong

During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, parents dress a pretty girl like a boy, so she may be educated in a local boarding school. There, she falls in love with a poor, but industrious young man. However, their short love affair ends in disaster.

Director: Gilles de Maistre
Stars: Tewfik Jallab, Younesse Boudache, Salah Teskouk
Genre: Drama, War
Country: France

A Lebanese kid is sent to France on a terrorist mission for “Allah’s Army”. An Arab French kid becomes involved unwittingly. A bond develops between the two, while they become alienated from and independent of the adults in their lives.

Director: Jing Wong
Stars: Stephen Chow, Man Cheung, Man-Tat Ng
Genre: Comedy
Country: Hong Kong

Pao Lung-Sing, a descendant of the famous Judge Pao Ching Tient, is a 9th degree corrupt judge (lowest degree) who changes his tune when he tries to champion a woman Chi Siu-Lin, who was framed for killing her husband. As a result, Pao is forced to flee and through a series of events (often hilarious) becomes a 1st degree judge and comes back to wreak havoc and justice on the guilty.

Director: Whit Stillman
Stars: Taylor Nichols, Chris Eigeman, Tushka Bergen
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Ted, a stuffy white guy from Illinois working in sales for the Barcelona office of a US corporation, is paid an unexpected visit by his somewhat less stuffy cousin Fred, who is an officer in the US Navy. Over the next few months, both their lives are irrevocably altered by the events which follow Fred’s arrival, events which are the trivial stuff of a comedy of manners at first but which gradually grow increasingly dramatic.

Director: Ismail Merchant
Stars: Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | India

An editor asks Deven, a teacher who loves Urdu poetry, to interview poet Nur Shahjehanabadi, an aging whale of a man. Deven goes to Bhopal from Mirpur to meet Nur, of whom he is in awe. He finds him living with feuding wives, visited by sycophants who drink his whisky and eat his food. Deven wants to record Nur for posterity and seeks funds to buy an aged tape recorder, to bribe Safiya, the elder wife, to get Nur into a room at a brothel for a week for the recording, and to feed Nur’s pals who show up. Nur’s beautiful second wife, Imtiaz, wants to be taken seriously as a poetess. Dever dismisses her and ignores his own wife and child much as Nur does. In the end, what is preserved?

Director: Laurent Boutonnat
Stars: Jeff Dahlgren, Mylène Farmer, Joss Ackland
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Horror
Country: France

October 1918: After returning to the civil life, the young Doctor Giorgio Volli searches for a group of children, which he had been the care-taker of before the first world war began. However, soon the searching becomes a part of hide-and-seek with death. Giorgio finds a village bordered with a treacherous marsh and rumours of wolves. There he also meets the mysterious Catherine.

Director: Alex Proyas
Stars: Brandon Lee, Michael Wincott, Rochelle Davis
Genre: Action, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA

A man brutally murdered comes back to life as an undead avenger of his and his fiancée’s murder.

Director: Pierre Falardeau
Stars: Hugo Dubé, Luc Picard, Pierre Rivard
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

A dramatization of the infamous Canadian terrorist abduction & murder of a government minister by a cell of The Quebec Liberation Front.

Director: Dorota Kedzierzawska
Stars: Karolina Ostrozna, Katarzyna Szczepanik, Malgorzata Hajewska
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

A thin child of about 10, nicknamed “Crow” because she mimics the bird, has no friends and rejects a teacher’s hug. At home, she is left on her own, her mom locks her out while entertaining a lover or is asleep. One morning, Crow sees a chubby, cherubic child hugged by both parents as the father leaves for work. When the toddler is left alone, Crow lifts her through the fence and kidnaps her. That day, Crow tries to mother the child, alternately playing with and scolding her, taking her to the beach, leaving shore in a boat, pushing her into the sea in a pique, and eventually carrying the sleeping child back home. Crow returns to her own mother and asks for affection.

Director: Christian Vincent
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Auteuil, Jérôme Deschamps
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

One night at the cinema, Pierre reaches for out to take Anne’s hand. She is annoyed and rebuffs him. He feels rejected. This moment begins the story of the disintegration of a couple… Pierre and Anne live in Paris with their two-year-old child Louis. After the night in the cinema it is clear that Anne is distracted and the small gulf between them seems to widen as time goes on. Lunches, evenings out with friends, there’s obvoiusly something wrong. One night after a party, Anne tells Pierre that she is in love with another man. Although her confession is not surprising, Pierre’s reaction is. He seems to accept it as a fact of life and refrains from asking the most burning questions. However, as Anne continues to see the other man, Pierre’s feelings become more violent and it begins to dawn on them that some thing intangible has happened that can’t be put right.

Director: Chris Menges
Stars: William Hurt, Nathan Yapp, Keith Allen
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | USA

Graham, a lonely Welsh postal worker, adopts James, a troubled ten-year-old boy. Graham always wanted a son, but James loves his biological father too much to give Graham a chance. Will the two be able to accept each other as family?

Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Country: UK

Three friends discover their new flatmate dead but loaded with cash.

Director: Sergiu Nicolaescu
Stars: Ion Siminie, Adrian Vâlcu, Gheorghe Dinica
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Romania

Focused around the August 23rd 1944 coup against Marshal Antonescu, the movie also tackles other topics from the same era such as the Iron Guard rebellion and the execution of political leaders by communists.

Director: Andrei Blaier
Stars: Gheorghe Dinica, Florina Cercel, Coca Bloos
Genre: Comedy
Country: Romania

Andrei Blaier’s film catches the last days of The Stone Cross a low class brothels area that became some kind of an institution in the landscape of Bucharest before the Communist period, doomed to destruction under the new rules of proletarian morals that the Communists were trying to impose. The idea could be the start of a great film, with the prostitution being seen not so much from its destructive and exploitation perspective, but rather as a form of freedom in a time when the whole society was falling under the rule of propaganda, hypocrisy, and repression. In a world due to fall under tyranny for the coming decades prostitution becomes a metaphor of the old more free way of life.

Director: Jackie Bastide, Jean-Jacques Beineix
Stars: Akitoshi Ashida, Hiroki Hashimoto, Noriko Kato
Genre: Documentary
Country: France

A documentary that explores the life styles of various otakus in Japan. Various interviews are given to selected otakus who express how interesting it is to be an otaku as oppose to not being one at all. Along with various shots of various Japanese city landscapes and the inside of an average otaku home from rooms filled with videos, models, and the latest in technology.

Director: Eric Rochant
Stars: Yvan Attal, Richard Masur, Allen Garfield
Genre: Thriller
Country: France

At 18, Ariel Brenner leaves Paris and his family to live in Israel. He secretly joins the Mossad, the Isreali secret service. After years of training, his first mission is in Paris to steal secrets from Remy Prieur, a French atomic scientist… We will assist to the methods, the manipulations, the abuses, the machiavellism, the doubts of secret agents.

Director: Marlon Riggs
Stars: Angela Davis, Essex Hemphill, bell hooks
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A film about black experiences with a “backdrop of Creole cooking.”

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Stars: Aleksandr Cherednik, Sergey Barkovskiy, Elizaveta Koroleva
Genre: Drama
Country: Russia | Germany

A hungry, homeless, socially isolated and socially alienated young man living on the streets of an anonymous Russian big city in the 19th Century is looking for answers about himself.

Director: Patrice Leconte
Stars: Jean-Pierre Marielle, Hippolyte Girardot, Sandra Extercatte
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

How the life of Victor Chmara toppled during the course of a single day during the summer of 1958 ?

Director: Eli Cohen
Stars: Gila Almagor, Kaipu Cohen, Juliano Mer-Khamis
Genre: Drama
Country: Israel

Individual memories of a group of teenage Holocaust survivors in Israel creates sharp conflicts among them.

Director: Teresa Villaverde
Stars: Maria de Medeiros, Marcello Urgeghe, Evgeniy Sidikhin
Genre: Drama
Country: Portugal | France | Germany

Lisboa, Portugal, mid-1990s. Three brothers, a young woman and two young men, are living together, careless of the future, or even the present. They love each other, but one day they go separate ways. When Maria does need help, the three brothers will join again – but a trifle too late.

Director: Andreas Gruber
Stars: Elfriede Irrall, Rainer Egger, Oliver Broumis
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Austria | Germany

It is the beginning of 1945 during WW2 in former Austria. 500 Russian prisoners of war who have refused to fight on the side of the Germans against their country were moved to the concentration camp in Mauthausen awaiting execution. They decide to break out. One winter night the Russian prisoners make an escape. During the following shooting a great number of them gets killed. Some, however, succeed to hide in nearby villages. But the German Nazis convince the inhabitants of the villages to hunt the prisoners “like rabbits”.

Director: Stanley Kwan
Stars: Joan Chen, Veronica Yip, Winston Chao
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | Taiwan

Chronicles the love life of a man, Zhenbao. He has a steamy fling with the wife of a friend, the saucy and exciting Red Rose. Even though he feels happy with her, he knows he will not end up with her. To maintain his reputation, he marries an antiseptic, frigid but classy lady of a prim and proper background (White rose). Dissonance abound when he finds his bride irritating.

Director: Bruce Brown
Stars: Patrick O’Connell, Robert ‘Wingnut’ Weaver, Robert August
Genre: Documentary, Adventure, Sport
Country: USA

Bruce Brown, king of surfing documentaries, returns after nearly thirty years to trace the steps of two young surfers to top surfing spots around the world. Along the way we see many of the people and locales Bruce visited during the filming of Endless Summer (1966).

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Rüdiger Vogler, Patrick Bauchau, Vasco Sequeira
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: Germany | Portugal

The director Friedrich Monroe has trouble with finishing a silent b&w movie about Lisbon. He calls his friend, the sound engineer Phillip Winter, for help. As Winter arrives Lisbon weeks later, Monroe is disappeared but has left the unfinished film. Winter decides to stay, because he is fascinated of the city and the Portuguese singer Teresa, and he starts to record the sound of the film. At the same time Monroe cruises through the city with a camcorder and tries to catch unseen pictures. Later they meet and Winter convinces Monroe of finishing the film.

Director: Mike Figgis
Stars: Albert Finney, Greta Scacchi, Matthew Modine
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

On the verge of forced resignation, a strict old-fashioned teacher rethinks his life.

Director: Ole Bornedal
Stars: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sofie Gråbøl, Kim Bodnia
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Country: Denmark

In order to finance his law studies, Martin starts as a night watchman in a mortuary. When the victims of a serial killer of prostitutes are deposited there, scary things begin to happen. Therefore and because of a strange bet with his fellow student Jens, the police begins to think he is the murderer. Police detective Wormer wants to help him but Martin is more and more suspected.

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Stars: Rambo Amadeus, Melodie Annis, Dennis Jakob
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Comedy
Country: Netherlands

Makavejev travels to Yugoslavia and charts the change of the society which Parallels his own life.

Director: Heddy Honigmann
Stars: Víctor Talledo, Señor English, Mercedes Aguilar
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: Netherlands

In 1992, Peru was just emerging from one of its darkest moments in its entire republican history (1821- onwards). A cataclysmic economic meltdown and over 10 years of death and conflict brought upon by the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla had left deep scars in the Peruvian population. Furthermore, Alberto Fujimori had just dissolved the congress and senate in order to obtain extraordinary faculties and implement harsh economic measures. It is amidst this critical moment in the history of Perú that filmmaker Heddy Honigmann chronicles the views and lives of 14 real life taxi drivers in Lima.

Director: Connie Field, Marilyn Mulford
Stars: Ronnie Washington
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Chronicles the Mississippi voter registration drive from 1961- 64.

Director: Martine Dugowson
Stars: Romane Bohringer, Elsa Zylberstein, Florence Thomassin
Genre: Drama
Country: Netherlands | France | Belgium

The film tells the story of two girls who are of totally different character. They know each other since their childhood and were friends until they became teenagers. But growing up and becoming adults they go different ways.

Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Stars: Nikita Mikhalkov, Anna Mikhalkova, Nadezhda Mikhalkova
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: Russia | France

Director Nikita Mikhalkov documents the history of Russia from 1980 to 1991 by annually asking his daughter Anna questions.

Director: Harald Sicheritz
Stars: Alfred Dorfer, Reinhard Nowak, Andrea Händler
Genre: Comedy
Country: Austria

A satirical take on the life of a family in a public housing complex in Vienna as they prepare for Mother’s Day.

Director: Ping He
Stars: Jing Ning, Gang Wu, Xiaorui Zhao
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: China | Hong Kong

A woman inherits her father’s fireworks factory, as he had no son. The business does well and everything works in an orderly fashion until one day, an itinerant painter is hired to decorate the doors and vases at the factory. The woman, forbidden to marry and thereby involve outsiders in the factory ownership, finds herself drawn to the headstrong painter. When they fall in love, the situation throws her entire life into disarray.

Director: Jianxin Huang, Yazhou Yang
Stars: Zhenhua Niu, Kesheng Lei, Qiang Li
Genre: Drama
Country: China | Hong Kong

Wang Shuangli is Deputy Director of the local Cultural Centre, and hopes to be appointed Director. However Old Ma is brought in from the country and installed as Director. This starts a long train of events with Wang’s cronies using the bureaucracy to try to oust the new director. At home, Wang has problems because his father wants Wang to have a son to carry on the family name. However, because of the one-child policy, Wang cannot have any more children unless his young daughter is certified infirm.

Director: Doris Dörrie
Stars: Maria Schrader, Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss, Michael von Au
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Germany

On the brink of her 30th birthday, Fanny feels the door to marital happiness closing up on her. She is obsessed with death, even visits evening classes on dying and so it seems fitting, that she encounters a skeleton in the malfunctioning elevator of her apartment building. The skeleton is her neighbour Orfeo, a black, gay self-declared psychic, who convinces her that she is about to meet “him”. But is it really Lothar, the new yuppie apartment manager …?

Director: Lucian Pintilie
Stars: Kristin Scott Thomas, Claudiu Bleont, Olga Tudorache
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Romania | France

Romania in the 1920s. Marie-Thérèse Von Debretsy (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) refuses the advances of her husband’s commanding officer. As a result, the cosmopolitan family is reassigned to a dark and dangerous outpost on the frontier between Bulgaria and Romania where their relationship and humanity are severely tested.

Director: Bruce McDonald
Stars: Ryan Rajendra Black, Adam Beach, Jennifer Podemski
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada

A story of life on a First Nations reserve in Ontario: Silas and Frank are trying to get into college to train to be mechanics but they find themselves having to deal with girls, family … and murder.

Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, Rosie Perez
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

A man’s personality is dramatically changed after surviving a major airline crash.

Director: Patrice Leconte
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Richard Bohringer, Thierry Lhermitte
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

Vincent, a stunt pilot, is acquitted of murdering his wife and her lover. However, a few years later, L’Elegant, the Judge in the case, comes to blackmail him. The Judge’s nephew, Paul, is having trouble with his wife and they demand that Vincent kill her. The Judge, a confirmed bachelor, takes Paul and Vincent on the road to search for Paul’s wife Marie. The three men get on well together, and spend their time discussing their relationship with women.

Director: Claude Berri
Stars: Renaud, Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | Belgium | Italy

In mid-nineteenth-century northern France, a coal mining town’s workers are exploited by the mine’s owner. One day, they decide to go on strike, and the authorities repress them.

Director: Andrew Davis
Stars: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

Dr. Richard Kimble, unjustly accused of murdering his wife, must find the real killer while being the target of a nationwide manhunt led by a seasoned U.S. Marshal.

Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: Ludvík Sváb, Bedrich Glaser, Jan Kraus
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: UK | Czech Republic

BREAKFAST: After eating breakfast, a man is transformed into an elaborate dumb-waiter-style breakfast dispenser – and the same fate befalls the man who obtains breakfast from him. LUNCH: After failing to catch the waiter’s eye, two would-be diners end up eating everything within reach. DINNER: Portraits of various meals made up of human organs.

Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Stars: Angela Bettis, Johnathon Schaech, Eva Alexander
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | Japan

Catania, Sicily, 1854. An epidemic of cholera is hitting the region. 16-year old novice Maria leaves her convent and returns home to avoid the plague. Her stepmother and her half-sisters prevent her to live the normal life of a young girl. In their minds, Maria is the promised “bride of God” and a regular life is inappropriate for her. Nevertheless, she falls in love with a neighbor, Nino. Her freedom ends abruptly when she is forced to return to the convent.

Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Branko Samarovski, Judit Pogány, Thierry van Werveke
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Austria

The disabled ex-soldier Andreas Pum lost a leg for emperor and father land. After leaving the army he receives a license and a drehorgel. One day he gets into a controversy with a welldressed gentleman, disturbs the public order, and hits a policeman. Andreas Pum goes to jail, loses his license and becomes toilet guard in the Cafe Halali after his release. Only at the moment of death he recognizes that he was always too decent and too obedient.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Sophie Aubry, Judith Godrèche, Bernard Giraudeau
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Switzerland

Tina is a young warehousewoman in a supermarket. She is in love with Fred but still lives at her mother Nadine’s. When Nadine dies, Tina looks for meeting her father Ludovic, who she never knew. But she first meets her half-sister Lise, and Constantin, the unusual Ludovic’s lawyer.

Director: Memduh Ün
Stars: Emre Akyildiz, Asuman Arsan, Meriç Basaran
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Turkey

Adana, a big city in Southern Turkey, 1949. Muzo, a young man, is experiencing a terrible heartache. He is in love but his love is baffled. He will finish his studies in five or six years and wanted to marry the girl he loves only then, when he was a “big man”, worthy of her. But the young lady’s father did not agree. He preferred any son-in-law rather than a well-read one like Muzo much later. And now that the wedding procession of the girl who will never be his passes him, Muzo remembers his childhood.

Director: Robert Enrico
Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Pierre Vaneck, Jean-François Balmer
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Switzerland

The true story of General Smyslovsky and the anti-Communist 1st Russian National Army receiving shelter in Liechtenstein in 1945 and successfully resisting Soviet pressure to be returned for execution in the USSR.

Director: Rolf de Heer
Stars: Nicholas Hope, Claire Benito, Ralph Cotterill
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Australia | Italy

Bubby has spent thirty years trapped in the same small room, tricked by his mother. One day, he manages to escape, and, deranged and naive in equal measures, his adventure into the modern and nihilistic life begins.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

Stan Brakhage’s artistic view of the cosmos.

Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Lou Castel, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Johanna ter Steege
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Switzerland

Middle-aged artistes provide the focus of this drama filmed in black and white. The story is set in Paris around the time of the Gulf War. Paul is an actor leading a drab directionless existence. He has an affair with Ulrika, a woman half his age. His wife, with whom he constantly argues, is pregnant with their second child. He does not interact much with his teenage son. Much of the film centers around the emptiness of his life.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Laurence Masliah, Bernard Verley
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France | Switzerland

Romance about Simon Donnadieu and his decision to leave his ever-loving wife Rachel.

Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: Jeremy Irons, John Lone, Barbara Sukowa
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Canada

In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.

Director: Jon Jost
Stars: Howard Swain, Nancy Carlin, Kate Sannella
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Ricky, a dim-witted ex-con, meets Beth, a dim-witted waitress, in an Idaho diner. They take off in his car to Washington and begin an affair. Beth, a lonely romance-novel addict, is hopelessly enamored; Ricky is just in it for the (constant) sex. Beth’s longing to visit California and Ricky’s longing for quick cash leads them into a desperate situation. Director Jost uses a variety of avant-garde visual and narrative techniques, such as montage, collages, split screens and lengthy, tongue-in-cheek monologues to tell the tragicomic story of two complete losers in love.

Director: Frédéric Back
Stars: Paul Hébert, Donald Sutherland
Genre: Documentary, Animation, Short
Country: Canada

The environmental history of the St. Lawrence River and the impact of human exploitation of it.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Luc Godard
Genre: Short
Country: France

Godard looks into the Bosnia conflict in the early 1990’s.

Director: Agnès Merlet
Stars: Ludovic Vandendaele, Eric da Silva, Sandrine Blancke
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Belgium | France | Luxembourg

Brothers Martin and Simon, not yet teens, are incorrigible vandals; Martin runs away from reform school, Simon from foster homes, and they always find each other in a seacoast town of Lignan, where their destructive behavior is infamous. (It may date to their mother’s leaving the family.) Martin is philosophical, romantic, and poetic: he dreams of being the son of a shark; he holds tight to a book about goldfish his mother gave him. In both halting and wild ways, he tries to court Marie, a neighbor girl. Simon, with a pocketknife and an intractable will, seems more dangerous to others. What, on earth, is there for these children-becoming-men?

Director: Emir Kusturica
Stars: Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA | France

A young New Yorker goes to Arizona where he finds freedom to both love and dream.

Director: Lita Stantic
Stars: Vanessa Redgrave, Ofelia Medina, Lautaro Murúa
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Mexico | UK

A film director decides to make a movie about Silvia, a woman who lost her husband during a particularly violent war. But will making a movie about it force Silvia to remember her traumatic past?

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: László Szabó, Jean-Luc Godard, Bernard Eisenschitz
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Switzerland

A famous French filmmaker is hired by a major Hollywood producer to make a documentary on the state of post-Cold War Russia. The filmmaker, though, subverts the project by stubbornly remaining in France and casting himself as the title character of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot,” offering up a series of typically Godardian musings on art, politics, the nature of images and the future of cinema.

Director: Jon Jost
Stars: Tom Blair, Marshall Gaddis, Ellen McLaughlin
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

Times are hard for Northwestern lumber-mill operators like Ray and his wife Jean. Ray and Jean’s lives are thrown into chaos when their daughter writes home from college, saying she has uncovered her repressed memories of sexual abuse, and naming Ray as her abuser.

Director: Victor Nunez
Stars: Ashley Judd, Todd Field, Bentley Mitchum
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A young woman struggles for independence and identity in a small Florida tourist town.

Director: Philip Haas
Stars: James Spader, Mandy Patinkin, M. Emmet Walsh
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A thrill seeker agrees to help a shady professional gambler win a high stakes poker game. However, they lose and become captives of two eccentric rich men who decide to forcibly keep them on their remote gated ranch as indentured servants.

Director: Nick Donkin, Melodie McDaniel
Stars: William S. Burroughs, Susan Ashline, Dayton Bard
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: USA

Burroughs takes down a book and reads us the story of Danny the Carwiper, who spends Christmas Day trying to score a fix, but finds the Christmas spirit instead.

Director: Stan Lai
Stars: Brigitte Lin, Shih-Chieh King, Pao-Ming Ku
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Taiwan

Two drama companies happened to share one auditorium for rehearsal. Friction was inevitable. One of them played ‘Peach Blossom’, a comedy in medieval costume. Another played ‘Secret Love’, a sad story with contemporary setting. Though unreconciled in all aspects, they find themselves telling the same story: the story of Chinese people forced to leave home.

Director: André Téchiné
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Marthe Villalonga
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

Old woman Berthe leaves her house to live in her daugter Emilie’s one. Emilie and her brother Antoine have fallen out three years ago and have not seen each other since, but Emilie invites him for Christmas. Memories will come up, and will be depicted both Berthe’s destiny and the strange relationship between Emilie and Antoine.

Director: Laurence Ferreira Barbosa
Stars: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Melvil Poupaud, Marc Citti
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: France

After hitting her head, a woman has to face living in a mental institution for a period of time.

Director: Gérard Mordillat
Stars: Sami Frey, Marc Barbé, Julie Jézéquel
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: France

May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his “theatre of cruelty” to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.

Director: Peter Friedman, Tom Joslin
Stars: Liane Bonin, Tom Joslin, Mark Massi
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary about two gay men as they live through their last months of life with AIDS.

Director: Bay Okan
Stars: Ilyas Salman, Valérie Lemoine, Micky Sébastian
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
Country: Turkey | France | Germany | Switzerland

The film is based on ‘Fikrimin Ince Gulu’, a novel by Adalet Agaoglu, which depicts a first generation gurbetci/guest-worker returning home. It covers his land journey in short bursts from Germany to the Turkey’s west border – and extensively from thereon to his village close to Ankara – capital of Turkey. He begins his journey purchasing a second hand yellow Mercedes – possibly his first car – using his meager savings working as a laborer. Offering deep insight into the mind of a manual laborer Bayram (Ilyas Salman) making his first trip back home, resorting to flashbacks in highlighting Bayram’s motivation and experiences from his childhood right up to the events leading to his first departure from Turkey to Germany.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film by Stan Brakhage in which light, black and white, and color images are contrasted.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK

A short black and white animated film with a contemporary musical accompaniment.

Director: George Paul Csicsery
Stars: Paul Erdös, Ronald Graham, Joel Spencer
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdos is a 1993 biographical documentary about the life of mathematician Paul Erdos, directed by George Paul Csicsery.

Director: Susan Raymond
Stars: Susan Raymond, Deanna Burney, Clary Jansson
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Filmmakers Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond document Philadelphia teachers facing challenges at an inner-city school.

Director: Yolande Zauberman
Stars: Roma Alexandrovitch, Aleksandr Yakovlev, Vladimir Mashkov
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Belarus

In 1930s Poland, it was traditional for some Christian boys to live for a time with Jewish families in order to learn a trade from Jewish craftsmen. For this reason, Ivan has gone to live on a large estate with Abraham and his family, has learned Yiddish, and has become Abraham’s best friend. But the anti-Semitism born of poverty, ignorance, and superstition is fierce in this community of and the two boys run away into the countryside to flee an imminent conflict. Journeying together in a menacing environment, they reveal their innocence and inseparability.

Director: François Girard
Stars: Colm Feore, Derek Keurvorst, Katya Ladan
Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: Canada | Netherlands | Portugal | Finland

A collection of vignettes highlighting different aspects of the life, work, and character of the acclaimed Canadian classical pianist.

Director: Bille August
Stars: Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Maria Conchita Alonso
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Portugal | Germany | Denmark | USA | France

A rancher, his clairvoyant wife and their family face turbulent years in South America in this adaptation of Isabel Allende’s best-seller.

Director: Ivan Passer
Stars: Robert Duvall, Julia Ormond, Maximilian Schell
Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: Russia | Hungary | USA

The life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Director: Helmut Dietl
Stars: Götz George, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Christiane Hörbiger
Genre: Comedy
Country: Germany

The slightly fictionalized story of an art forger, a journalist desperate for a big story, and the biggest press scandal in German history: the Hitler Diaries.

Director: Stijn Coninx
Stars: Jan Decleir, Gérard Desarthe, Antje de Boeck
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Belgium | France | Netherlands

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He’s expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman’s rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Director: Coline Serreau
Stars: Vincent Lindon, Patrick Timsit, Zabou Breitman
Genre: Comedy, Music
Country: Italy | France

When Victor finds out one morning that his wife had left him and that she had forgotten to at least buy milk for the Kids, he finds that things can only get worse. Having also been fired from his job on the very same day, he ends up searching through a list of friends and family for someone who will listen to his grief and give some advice. The only person who does give him attention is a rather clumsy and not too intelligent street pauper called Michou. Victor finds Michou irritating and only finally comes to see him in a positive light when he starts to realise that his insensitivity to those closest to him has been major reason for all his troubles.

Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Didier Bezace, Jean-Paul Comart, Charlotte Kady
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France

This gritty police drama shows us the underbelly of the Parisian drug trade. Lulu is a tough streetwise narcotics cop who, like a Frank Serpico or a Dirty Harry Callahan, doesn’t play by the rules or kowtow to his weak and/or corrupt superiors. Lulu thrives in this violent world, where sheer guts can overcome his squad’s deficiencies of money and equipment. Despite the ruthless environment that he lives and works in every day, he still manages somehow to maintain his humanity.

Director: Darrell Roodt
Stars: Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo, Miriam Makeba
Genre: Drama, Musical
Country: South Africa | UK | France | USA

South African teenagers fight against apartheid in the Soweto Uprising.

Director: Paul Turner
Stars: Huw Garmon, Catrin Fychan, Ceri Cunnington
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK

A young poet living in the North Wales countryside competes for the most coveted prize of all in Welsh Poetry – that of the chair of the National Eisteddfod, a tradition dating back a hundred years. Before the winner is announced Hedd Wyn gets sent to fight with the English in the trenches of the First World War.

Director: Ousmane Sembene
Stars: Abou Camara, Marie Augustine Diatta, Mame Ndoumbé Diop
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Germany | Senegal | USA

Burial of a Christian political activist in a Muslim cemetary forces a conflict imbued with religious fervor. A satiric portrayal of religion and politics, sometimes humorous, sometimes deadly serious.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Robert John Burke, Bill Sage, Martin Donovan
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | UK | USA

Bitter about being double-crossed by the women he loved, (and with the police after him to boot), Bill vows to seduce the next woman he sees, then throw her away. His brother Dennis, meanwhile, is equally determined to track down their long lost father, a revolutionary who has been in hiding for 20 years. For different reasons, both leave New York and head for Long Island, out of money, and short on ideas. D:”Long Island is a a terminal moraine.” B:”What’s that?” D:”It’s the material left behind when a glacier recedes.” D:”Gee, then what the hell are we waiting for?”

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Stars: Pyotr Aleksandrov, Leonid Mozgovoy
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Russia

A caretaker encounters Anton Chekov and spends a lonely night and day in his company.

Director: Jûzô Itami
Stars: Nobuko Miyamoto, Yasuo Daichi, Takehiro Murata
Genre: Comedy
Country: Japan

A grand old Japanese hotel is trying to get a prestigious contract as the site of a summit meeting of important foreign officials. Unfortunately, this hotel is quite popular with the Yakuza (Japanese gangsters) and is a favorite target of theirs for extortion. They employ a variety of schemes to con the hotel out of ‘hush-money.’ The hotel needs to rid itself of the Yakuza and finally begins to fight back by hiring Mahiru Inoue, a lawyer who is an expert at dealing with these criminals on their own terms. This film by Juzo Itami combines action with farce, as an all-out war ensues.

Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Stars: Mansour Diouf, Ami Diakhate, Faly Gueye
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Switzerland | France | Senegal | UK | Netherlands | Italy

Dramaan is the most popular man in Colobane, but when a woman from his past, now exorbitantly wealthy, returns to the town, things begin to change.

Director: Mike Newell
Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Ciarán Fitzgerald
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Country: Ireland | UK

Grandpa Ward gives a horse he found to his grandchildren, who keep it in their tower-block flat in Dublin. The horse is stolen from them, and the two young boys set out to find it and flee on it.

Director: Tim Robbins
Stars: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Rickman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA | UK

A conservative folk singer turns his hand to politics, running for the US Senate. He is not above dirty tricks and smear campaigns to gain an advantage over his opponent.

Director: Édouard Molinaro
Stars: Michel Piccoli, Claude Brasseur, Claude Rich
Genre: Drama, History
Country: France

France, 1815. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon heads for exile. Royalists occupy Paris and attempt to restore the monarchy. However, the battle doesn’t seem to be over. On July 6, Talleyrand, a shrewd politician of flexible convictions, invites chief of police and zealous revolutionary Fouché to supper and tries to convince him to serve the king. Over the meal they insult each other, accuse each other, and, at first sight, look like mortal enemies. But they definitely have one thing in common: they are both power-hungry.

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Stars: Rie Miyazawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Toshiya Nagasawa
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Japan

Chronicles the trials and tribulations of Oribe, the successor to tea-master Rikyu, Usu, his gardener, and Princess Goh, who attempt to balance artistic expression and duty amid political intrigue in feudal Japan.

Director: Ebrahim Forouzesh
Stars: Behzad Khodaveisi, Fatemeh Azrah, Abbas Khavaninzadeh
Genre: Drama, Family
Country: Iran

In the yard of an Iranian village school stands in the shade of a tree a large stoneware jar from which all the pupils drink fresh water. On an unfortunate day, the jar starts leaking. The schoolmaster tries hard to get a new one but in vain. The only solution is to have it fixed…

Director: Jonathan Demme
Stars: Robert W. Castle, Jane Castle Moulton, Kate Castle
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA | Spain

A documentary about Director Jonathan Demme’s cousin, an Episcopalian minister in Harlem.

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Stina Ekblad, Anita Björk, Marie Richardson
Genre: History
Country: Sweden

Ingmar Bergman’s staging at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. While the Marquis De Sade is in prison on charges of crimes of gross perversion, his faithful wife Renee awaits him. Despite all the horrors her husband has committed, she believes that his evil is sacred. Her mother however does everything possible to ensure that the Marquis stays in prison.

Director: Temur Babluani
Stars: Elguja Burduli, David Kazishvili, Lia Babluani
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: Georgia

The Sun of the Sleepless. The film is about a doctor named Gela Bendeliani (Elgudzha Burduli) and his wealthless family in Tbilisi in Soviet Georgia. In the film Gela Bendeliani has an unlimited capacity for generosity and forgiveness.

Director: Cyril Collard
Stars: Cyril Collard, Romane Bohringer, Carlos López
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: France | Italy

A bitter story of a young man’s crisis.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film of flashing images made by Stan Brakhage.

Director: Barbara Trent
Stars: Elizabeth Montgomery, Carlos Cantú, Diviana Ingravallo
Genre: Documentary, History, War
Country: USA | UK

A film about the true reasons for the 1989 US invasion of Panama and big media complicity in these activities.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Siu Chung Mok
Genre: Action, Adventure, Biography
Country: Hong Kong

Master Wong and his disciples enroll in the ‘Dancing Lion Competition’ to stop an assassination plot and to battle an arrogant, deceitful opponent.

Director: Srdjan Dragojevic
Stars: Nikola Kojo, Milena Pavlovic, Branka Katic
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Angel and the devil fight for the soul of a Belgrade playboy who made a young girl pregnant.

Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Austria | Switzerland

A 14-year-old video enthusiast is so caught up in film fantasy that he can no longer relate to the real world, to such an extent that he commits murder and records an on-camera confession for his parents.

Director: Sam Raimi
Stars: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA

A sardonic hardware store clerk is accidentally transported to 1300 A.D., where he must retrieve the Necronomicon and battle an army of the dead so he can return home.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK

A tear falls from the eyes of a veiled face. A white ball whips around a heart-shaped paddle. A mournful voice sings, “Are we still married?” A child’s stuffed rabbit watches, sees someone’s legs hanging and shoes jiggling, and sees a girl holding a heart-shaped paddle. A hand seen through a door’s glass knocks incessantly; the lock jiggles, the child holds the heart-shaped object and leans against the wall, sometimes moving up and down on the toes of her shoes. The rabbit watches, plays with the ball, tries to keep the door shut. The child raises her face; we see a woman’s eyes.

Director: Otar Iosseliani
Stars: Narda Blanchet, Pierette Pompom Bailhache, Aleksandr Cherkasov
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy | Germany

A noble family of France maintains dignity despite the onslaught of modernism and non-white immigrants.

Director: Adolfo Aristarain
Stars: José Sacristán, Federico Luppi, Leonor Benedetto
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Spain | Uruguay

Mario and Ana, in voluntary exile from Buenos Aires, live in a remote Argentine valley with their 12-year-old son Ernesto. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative; Ana, a doctor, heads a clinic with Nelda, a progressive nun. Into this idealistic family comes Hans, a jaded Spanish geological engineer — surveying the land for the local patron, to see if it can be dammed for hydro-electric power, which would drive the peasants from the land into the cities.

Director: Jean Beaudin
Stars: Roy Dupuis, Jacques Godin, Jean-François Pichette
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Canada

Depicts the crime of one member of a gay male relationship and the desperate struggle for the lead character to make those around him understand the reason for his crime.

Director: Roeland Kerbosch
Stars: Maarten Smit, Andrew Kelley, Jeroen Krabbé
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Netherlands

Set in The Netherlands at the end of WW II, this touching story, told in flashbacks, explores the complex and romantic relationship between an adult soldier and a displaced, lonely adolescent boy.

Director: David Markey
Stars: Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo
Genre: Documentary, History, Music
Country: USA

David Markey’s documentary of life on the road with Sonic Youth and Nirvana during their tour of Europe in late 1991. Also featuring live performances by Dinosaur Jr, Babes In Toyland, The Ramones and Gumball.

Director: Gillian Armstrong
Stars: Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, Kerry Fox
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Australia

Vicki returns to her elder sister Beth’s house in Australia after an affair in Italy. Beth, with a teenage daughter, has become involved in something of a marriage of convenience with Frenchman J.P., and her rather prickly houseproud ways are causing frictions counterpointed by Vicki’s more laid-back and indolent air. When Beth goes off on vacation to the outback alone with her cantankerous father to see if they can finally get to know each other, relationships in the household start to shift.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Siu Chung Mok
Genre: Action, Adventure, Biography
Country: Hong Kong

In the sequel to the Tsui Hark classic, Wong Fei-Hung faces The White Lotus society, a fanatical cult seeking to drive the Europeans out of China through violence, even attacking Chinese who follow Western ways. Wong must also defend Dr. Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary, from the military. With his friends, loved ones, and the future of China itself at stake, Wong must once again use his martial arts skills to defend the innocent.

Director: Vincent Ward
Stars: Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: Australia | UK | Canada | France

Arctic, 1965: Avik tells his story starting 1931. A mapmaker flies Avik, then a preteen Eskimo boy with TB, to a hospital in Montreal, where he meets Albertine. They meet again when Avik joins WWII in UK.

Director: Ken Loach
Stars: Robert Carlyle, Emer McCourt, Jim R. Coleman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

The story of Stevie, a construction worker, and his girlfriend, an unemployed pop singer, serves to show the living conditions of the British poor class.

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Stars: Kenji Sawada, Tomoko Mariya, Masumi Miyazaki
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) gets involved with a beautiful widow, becoming a rival of her dead husband’s ghost and the jealous lover who murdered him.

Director: Neil Jordan
Stars: Beverly D’Angelo, Donal McCann, Niall Byrne
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Ireland

The two teenagers Jimmy and Rose spend their vacation at the small Irish sea-resort Bray. Out of boredom they observe other people and imagine wild stories about them. One day they observe the blonde Renee, and Jimmy is immediately fascinated by her and even follows her home. She, too, seems to like him, but for a mysterious reason keeps him at a distance.

Director: Diane Keaton
Stars: Beau Bridges, Susan Blakely, William McNamara
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

An abused and partially deaf girl is helped back into society by two resourceful children.

Director: Sven Nykvist
Stars: Stellan Skarsgård, Ewa Fröling, Erland Josephson
Genre: Drama
Country: Sweden | Norway | Denmark

Swedish pauper’s family is starving. In desperation, he steals his lord’s ox. He hopes that the crime will not be revealed, but it happens.

Director: James Lapine
Stars: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Music
Country: UK | France

In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sand.

Director: María Novaro
Stars: María Rojo, Carmen Salinas, Tito Vasconcelos
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico | Spain

Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.

Director: Vicente Aranda
Stars: Victoria Abril, Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdú
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain

Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.

Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars: Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, Sandrine Holt
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Canada | Australia

In the 17th century, a Jesuit missionary nicknamed Black Robe by the natives and his small party of companions try reaching the Huron tribe in Canada all while facing mistrust, Iroquois warring parties and harsh winter conditions.

Director: Percy Adlon
Stars: Rosel Zech, k.d. lang, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany

A woman who grew up in a small town in Alaska goes to the public library to try and find out who her parents were. She was brought to town as a baby in a cardboard box with “Kotzebue” on it, which is the name of the town and also the name of the family that founded the town. She eventually befriends the librarian, an East German immigrant who lost her husband while escaping from behind the Iron Curtain. They help each other try to find closure to the events in their past.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, Miguel Bosé
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain | France

A girl’s mother returns after 15 years to find her daughter has married one of her (the mother’s) old boyfriends. They try to mend their broken mother/daughter relationship and deal with their common lover.

Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Adam Bryant
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA

A former radio DJ, suicidally despondent because of a terrible mistake he made, finds redemption in helping a deranged homeless man who was an unwitting victim of that mistake.

Director: Valeriy Todorovskiy
Stars: Evgeniy Mironov, Natalya Petrova, Dmitriy Maryanov
Genre: Romance
Country: Soviet Union

Two Moscow students are mostly concerned with scoring with women but their lives change radically when one of them falls for a Jewish girl whose family is being persecuted by anonymous anti-Semites and is preparing to emigrate to Israel.

Director: Peter Charles Downey
Stars: John Seed, David Holmgren, Michael Reynolds
Genre: Documentary
Country: Australia

About the planetary animal called Gaia and the human animal we deny.

Director: Sean Penn
Stars: David Morse, Viggo Mortensen, Valeria Golino
Genre: Drama
Country: USA | Japan

A Vietnam vet comes home to his small town and finds himself in conflict with rules that his brother has vowed to uphold.

Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Stars: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli, Giuseppe Cederna
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: Italy

In WW2, an Italian Army unit of misfits occupies an isolated non-strategic Greek island for the duration of the war.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Pascal Benezech
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France

Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.

Director: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Pascal Benezech
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France

Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.

Director: Paul Cox
Stars: Sheila Florance, Gosia Dobrowolska, Norman Kaye
Genre: Drama
Country: Australia

Uplifting and intimate look at the last days of an elderly cancer victim. The film is even more relevant as it was written specifically for the lead actress, Sheila Florance, who was in fact dying of cancer as she created what is essentially a self-portrait.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Judith Godrèche, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Thomas Langmann
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy

Adrien is 19 years old. He has not met his father, Clément for 4 years. Adrien returns home and the two try to better understand each other. Clément lives together with Louis, a twenty-something girl who wants to be an actress. The boy starts a flirt with Louise which pushes the father-son relationship back to a crisis…

Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Benoît Régent, Johanna ter Steege, Yann Collette
Genre: Drama
Country: France

For those who were young, living under the delusions of love and soft drugs in Paris, May 1968 – even if the guitar is still playing, they can’t hear it any longer.

Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer, Christophe Malavoy
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Germany

In nineteenth-century France, the romantic daughter of a country squire marries a dull country doctor. To escape boredom, she throws herself into love affairs with a suave local landowner and a law student, and runs up ruinous debts.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK

A calligrapher creates his own quill pen.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Guilaine Londez, Thomas Langmann, François Négret
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium | France | Switzerland

Jack and Julie live in a bare flat in Paris. At night, Jack drives a taxi while Julie wanders around the city, and in the day they make love. One day Julie meets Joseph, the daytime driver of the taxi, and soon Julie is spending her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.

Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Oleg Yankovskiy, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union | UK

A patient in a modern day mental institution believes that he is the man who assassinated Tsar Alexander in 1881 and Tsar Nicolas II in 1918. He and his doctor soon slip out of reality and are forced to relive the events of 1918 in order to break the spell.

Director: Larry Elikann
Stars: Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Anthony Higgins
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Luxembourg | USA

Mary Lindell works for the French Red Cross in Occupied France during World War II and helps allied soldiers who have been shot down to escape to the unoccupied side. Her activities are complicated by her high profile and her daughter’s love affair with a German officer. Based on the true story.

Director: Peter Greenaway
Stars: John Gielgud, Michael Clark, Michel Blanc
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK | Netherlands | France | Italy | Japan

The magician Prospero attempts to stop his daughter’s affair with an enemy.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Pietro Falcone
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Germany | France | Australia

In 1999, Claire’s life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, as a way of recording dreams is being invented.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Weiser Quay
Stars: Witold Schejbal
Genre: Documentary, Animation, Short
Country: UK

Uses animation to explore anamorphosis, a method to put hidden images within an artwork, by distorting it using the rules of perspective.

Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Stars: Silu Seppälä, Marjo Leinonen, Matti Pellonpää
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Finland

Antti “Zombie” Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months’ sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he’s called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers’ soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents’ house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band “Harry and the Mulefukkers” then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Eddie Constantine, Hanns Zischler, Claudia Michelsen
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Characterized by deconstructivism and philosophical references and by briefly exposing the good, bad, and ugly periods of the country’s history, this post-modern film portrays the abstract need for guidance of Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Director: Norman Stone
Stars: Bob Peck, Janet McTeer, Geraldine Somerville
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

In the 1830’s in northern England, Riah Millican, a widow with three children, takes a job as housekeeper to a reclusive former teacher, Percival Miller. Miller makes Riah the gift of a black velvet gown, and even educates her children. But when Riah discovers the reason behind Miller’s gifts, she vows to leave his house, but Miller has a hold on her, even after his death, when he leaves his house to her on the condition that she never marry. Riah’s daughter, Biddy, grows up and becomes a laundress in a large house where her education keeps her from fitting in and makes her a target. But it also catches the eye of a son of the house, and with Miller’s legacies, Biddy may yet find her way to happiness.

Director: Alain Corneau
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Anne Brochet
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: France

The story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, fierce and somber man, grand master of the viola da gamba and professor of Marin Marais, prestigious musician in the court of Louis XIV.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Biao Yuen
Genre: Action, Adventure, History
Country: Hong Kong

Late 1800s Foshan, Guangdong: Wong Fei Hung/Jet Li trains men in martial arts to help defend against foreign powers already holding Hong Kong and Macau. He looks after cute 13th Aunt, who’s just returned from England. Lots of fight scenes.

Director: Robert Mulligan
Stars: Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, Gail Strickland
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A coming of age story set in the south of the U.S. when Elvis was King.

Director: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA | UK

When dirty cop Mike shoots a man and plants a gun on him, rookie assistant DA Al gets the case. Something in the Q&A of Mike isn’t right. Bodies pile up as Al tries to solve the case.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Rebecca Nelson
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | USA

After being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidnapped Maria sets out to find the woman.

Director: Barry Levinson
Stars: Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Leo Fuchs
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.

Director: Dariush Mehrjui
Stars: Pantea Bahram, Ezzatolah Entezami, Bita Farahi
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran

Hamoon’s wife is leaving him. He is also unsuccessfully trying to finish his Ph.D. thesis. He is forced to reexamine his life. In a series of flashbacks and dreams, Hamoon tries to figure out what he did wrong.

Director: Pavel Lungin
Stars: Pyotr Mamonov, Pyotr Zaychenko, Vladimir Kashpur
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Soviet Union | France

A comedic love/hate relationship develops between a dour taxi driver and a hapless aspiring musician after the latter stiffs his cab fare.

Director: Ali Hatami
Stars: Rogheyeh Chehreh-Azad, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Farimah Farjami
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran

How a mother acts in the hardest parts of her, and her children’s lives.

Director: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Stars: Julian Sands, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Massimo Bonetti
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | France | Germany

Young nobleman Baron Sergio Giuramondo, after discovering that his bride-to-be was the king’s mistress, leaves Naples in disgust to become a monk. But his quest for perfect solitude is constantly interrupted by visitors hearing rumours that Sergio possesses miraculous powers, and by women who bet each other that they can successfully seduce him…

Director: Idrissa Ouedraogo
Stars: Rasmané Ouédraogo, Ina Cissé, Roukietou Barry
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Switzerland | UK | France | Burkina Faso | Germany

Set in a pre-colonial African past, Tilai is about an illicit love affair and its consequences. Saga returns to his village after an extended absence to discover that his father has taken Nogma, Saga’s promised bride, for himself. Still in love with each other, the two begin an affair, although it would be considered incestuous. When the liaison is discovered, Saga’s brother, Koudri, pretends to kill Saga for the honor of the family and village. Saga and Nogma flee to another village, but when Nogma’s birth mother dies, he returns home. Having brought ruin on the family, Saga is shot by Koudri, who walks off into exile and probable death.

Director: Carlos Saura
Stars: Carmen Maura, Andrés Pajares, Gabino Diego
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: Spain | Italy

During the Spanish Civil War, a group of comics lightens the days of the Republican troops. Tired of life in the front lines, they make their way to Valencia, accidentally entering enemy land and falling prisoner.

Director: Christian Vincent
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Judith Henry, Maurice Garrel
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

There is an author who has been dumped by his girlfriend and has no inspiration for a next novel. In an attempt to find a solution to both crises, he, along with his publisher friend, decides to seduce a young woman with the singular purpose of keeping a diary of the seduction and then dump her before publishing the book about it. Unfortunately he falls in love with her.

Director: Derek Jarman
Stars: Tilda Swinton, Johnny Mills, Philip MacDonald
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Germany | Japan

A nearly wordless visual narrative inter cuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones.

Director: Sergio Rubini
Stars: Sergio Rubini, Margherita Buy, Ennio Fantastichini
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy

It starts as a studio theatre: a good-natured, bit pedantic stationmaster performs his job at a railway station in the middle of nowhere. Eventually a beautiful, obviously very rich young woman enters the station and wants to buy a ticket. She has to wait, they start talking, get closer – high-society meets petty bourgeois. Then suddenly the mood turns around: the woman’s fiance appears and tries to prevent the girl from leaving with increasing violence. The stationmaster interferes and the film becomes a thriller about a fight to the death.

Director: Étienne Chatiliez
Stars: Tsilla Chelton, Catherine Jacob, Isabelle Nanty
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France

Auntie Danielle, supposedly in ailing health but in reality just a nasty old bitch, lives with a paid housekeeper who she regularly abuses. When the housekeeper dies falling off a ladder, Danielle moves in with her great-nephew and his family. She continues using her nastiness to manipulate everyone into doing things her way until the family goes on vacation to Greece. The young housekeeper they hire to watch after her knows what Auntie is doing, and deals with her accordingly, and they begin forming respect for each other.

Director: Xavier Koller
Stars: Necmettin Çobanoglu, Nur Sürer, Emin Sivas
Genre: Drama
Country: Switzerland | Turkey | UK | France

The story of a poor Turkish family who try to emigrate illegally to Switzerland.

Director: Jacques Doillon
Stars: Richard Anconina, Gérald Thomassin, Clotilde Courau
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Marc and Nathalie are brother and sister living separately since their parents’ separation. Marc decides to visit Nathalie but in order to finance his trip he robs a shop bringing him to the attention of the police.

Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Edward Woodward, Maynard Eziashi
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

In 1923, a local resident of British Colonial Nigeria tries to be equal with the colonial administration.

Director: Harriet Eder, Thomas Kufus
Stars: Erich von Manstein
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: Germany

Late in the 1980s, two documentary film makers found six German men, all in their 60s and 70s, who had been soldiers in the German invasion of the USSR in 1942. Each carried an 8mm camera into battle and they still had their film. “Mein Kreig” alternates between interviews with these older men, now apologetic, philosophical, or defiant about their participation, and the footage they shot. It’s chronological: basic training, the train trip East, roof-top vistas of war-torn Warsaw, peasants in Belarus, the downing with carbine volleys of a Russian plane, winter, a holiday at the Black Sea, mud, impassable roads, death, destruction and retreat. “Home, that was the front,” one says.

Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Jane Birkin, Odette Laure
Genre: Drama
Country: France

The setting is the Riviera in autumn. A retired English businessman (Sir Dirk Bogarde) has just been through heart surgery, but it has, apparently, done little to relieve his constant pain or improve his long-term survival prospects. During his recuperation, Caroline (Jane Birkin), his adult daughter, comes from Paris to be with him and her mother, Miche (Odette Laure), and she and her father begin to communicate as adults for the first time.

Director: María Luisa Bemberg
Stars: Assumpta Serna, Dominique Sanda, Héctor Alterio
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina

A viceroy and an archbishop take their posts in Mexico. A local nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), intrigues them. The viceroy and his wife find her brilliant and fascinating. The prelate finds her a symbol of European laxity. He engineers the election of a new abbess, severe and ascetic. The virreina visits Sor Juana often and inspires her to write passionate poetry that the archbishop finds scandalous. The viceroy protects her. After he is replaced and returns to Spain with his wife, Sor Juana faces envy and retribution. A bishop betrays her, her confessor humbles her. Plague, a tribunal, and her confession as “the worst of all” end the great poet’s life.

Director: Yves Robert
Stars: Julien Ciamaca, Philippe Caubère, Nathalie Roussel
Genre: Adventure, Biography, Comedy
Country: France

Every holiday Marcel and his family go to their cottage in the Provence (France). He likes the hills in this region. Before they arrive at the cottage they have to walk about 5 miles. With the co-operation of an ex-pupil of Marcel’s father, who’s a teacher, they only have to walk 1 mile, since they can take a shortcut along a canal, through the backyards of some eccentric people. During one of these holidays he meets Isabelle, a pretty but conceited girl…

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Stars: Debra Winger, John Malkovich, Campbell Scott
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: UK | Italy

An American couple travel abroad to revitalize their relationship. But as the trip drags on, their attempt at recovering what they once had seems futile.

Director: Jacques Doillon
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Béatrice Dalle, Jean-Louis Murat
Genre: Drama
Country: France

After the suicide of her husband, a widow is trying to get a confession from his mistress that it was her fault.

Director: Chuck Workman
Stars: John Warhola, Viva, Dennis Hopper
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

A look at the life, work, and impact of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), pop icon and artist, from his childhood in Pittsburgh to his death after a botched surgery. Warhol coined the word “superstar,” became one, and changed the way the culture looks at and understands celebrity. After studying at Carnegie Tech, he goes to New York to be a commercial artist. By 1960, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist are inventing pop art. Warhol starts “The Factory,” his workshop where he paints and makes movies. His is a cafe society of late nights and parties. His family, friends, an agent, a curator, gallery owners, actors, the co-founder of “Interview,” and others tell stories and assess his art.

Director: Barbara Kopple, Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, Lawrence Silk
Stars: Jesse Jackson, Juan Munoz, Ray Rogers
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA | UK

Chronicles the six-month strike at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, in 1985-86. The local union, P-9 of the Food and Commercial Workers, overwhelmingly rejects a contract offer with a $2/hour wage cut. They strike and hire a New York consultant to manage a national media campaign against Hormel. Despite support from P-9’s rank and file, FCWU’s international disagrees with the strategy. In addition to union-company tension, there’s union-union in-fighting. Hormel holds firm; scabs, replacement workers, brothers on opposite sides, a union coup d’état, and a new contract materialize. The film asks, was it worth it, or was the strike a long-term disaster for organized labor?

Director: Alan Parker
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Tamlyn Tomita, Sab Shimono
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA

The passionate romance between an Irish-American man and a Japanese-American woman is threatened when the Pearl Harbor attacks happen and the woman is forced into a prison camp because of her ethnicity.

Director: Jan Egleson
Stars: Michael Caine, Elizabeth McGovern, Peter Riegert
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller
Country: USA

When you think you’re at the top of the corporate ladder and then discover they have managed to pull that ladder away, sometimes you have to take it upon yourself to “level” the playing field, both professionally and personally. Sir Michael Caine delivers an electrifying performance as Graham Marshall, who quickly catches onto the possibilities as he clears all the hurdles to occupy the corner office.

Director: Bob Rafelson
Stars: Patrick Bergin, Iain Glen, Richard E. Grant
Genre: Adventure, Drama, History
Country: USA

The legendary true-story of Capt. Richard Francis Burton and Lt. John Hanning Speke’s tumultuous expedition to find the source of the Nile river.

Director: Peter Werner
Stars: Max von Sydow, Judd Nelson, Mako
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: USA

Life in Hiroshima, following different Japanese, a German priest and church, and some American POWs, before and after the atomic bomb was dropped August 6, 1945.

Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi, Marina Vlady
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France

Jordan, forced to close his movie theater due to financial problems, recalls the events, the characters and the films that marked his life.

Director: Alison Maclean
Stars: Theresa Healey, Peter Tait, Annagretta Christian
Genre: Short, Horror
Country: New Zealand

A woman finds something quaint in her kitchen sink and feels strangely captivated towards it.

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Stars: Rentarô Mikuni, Yoshiko Mita, Tsutomu Yamazaki
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Japan

Legendary tea master Sen no Rikyu is faced with his warmongering lord’s unrealistic pretensions.

Director: Charles Lane
Stars: Charles Lane, Nicole Alysia, Tom Alpern
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

Nearly silent comedy filmed in black and white follows a street artist (Charles Lane), who rescues a baby after her father was murdered. The artist then sets off to find the mother, but has to first learn how to care for the child. Ultimately he ends up in a horse drawn chase of the murderers.

Director: Ken Russell
Stars: Sammi Davis, Amanda Donohoe, Paul McGann
Genre: Action, Drama, Romance
Country: UK

A young woman deals in her own personal way with the trials of adolescence and young adulthood in early 1900s England.

Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Drama
Country: USA

The last moments of a creature made out of fruits and vegetables.

Director: Anne Wheeler
Stars: Rebecca Jenkins, Luke Reilly, Michael Ontkean
Genre: Drama, Romance, Music
Country: Canada

Story about a WWII wife & mother who joins a local dance band to provide for family while husband at war. Romantic involvement with one of the band members make her decisions difficult when husband returns from war. Story watches the progression of the band as it grows into a popular, successful recording and touring group. Excellent music and soundtrack.

Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi, Anne Parillaud
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy | France

The visit of a lawer to his military son is an opportunity to recall the past, discuss the future and find a meeting point between two diametrically opposite personalities.

Director: Al Reinert
Stars: Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly, Russell Schweickart
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA

An in-depth look at various NASA moon landing missions, starting with Apollo 8.

Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: UK | USA | West Germany

Two pieces of meat fall in love.

Director: Jorge Furtado
Stars: Paulo José, Ciça Reckziegel, Douglas Trainini
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Brazil

The ironic, heartbreaking and acid “saga” of a spoiled tomato: from the plantation of a “Nisei” (Brazilian with Japanese origins); to a supermarket; to a consumer’s kitchen to become sauce of a pork meat; to the garbage can since it is spoiled for the consumption; to a garbage truck to be dumped in a garbage dump in “Ilha das Flores”; to the selection of nutriment for pigs by the employees of a pigs breeder; to become food for poor Brazilian people.

Director: Costa-Gavras
Stars: Jessica Lange, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Frederic Forrest
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

A lawyer defends her father accused of war crimes, but there is more to the case than she suspects.

Director: Stanley Kwan
Stars: Sylvia Chang, Maggie Cheung, Yat-Gam Chu
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | USA

Three very different Asian women forge a friendship in New York.

Director: Lindsay Anderson
Stars: Ellen Greene, Richard Thomas, James Whitmore
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada | UK

A radio preacher’s operation is controlled by his honest but colorless son. When the preacher is promoted into a media superstar by a savvy huckster, the son is left behind.

Director: Wendell B. Harris Jr.
Stars: Wendell B. Harris Jr., Timothy Alvaro, Dave Barber
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

William Douglas Street is bored with his life. Working for his father is getting to him, his wife wants more money, and he’s had enough. His solution is to re-invent himself. He becomes a chameleon, taking on whatever role suits the situation. From reporter to doctor to lawyer, he impersonates anyone he sees a need for and he can earn money being. The movie is based on the real people, William Douglas Street, Jr., and Erik Dupin.

Director: Adam Davidson
Stars: Scotty Bloch, Clebert Ford, Bernard Johnson
Genre: Short, Drama
Country: USA

A woman misses her train and buys lunch in a café. When she returns to her table, a man is eating her salad.

Director: Pekka Parikka
Stars: Taneli Mäkelä, Vesa Vierikko, Timo Torikka
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Finland

In 1939, two Finnish brothers are conscripted in the army to fight in the war between Finland and the Soviet Union.

Director: Alejandro Agresti
Stars: Tito Haas, Mirta Busnelli, Sergio Poves Campos
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Canada | Netherlands

As an anonymous man, Fermin leaves his underground hideout in the subway. The dictatorship in the country is followed by democracy, but the bright light of it blinds Fermin: he is displaced. At the police station, his anonymity is complete and he doesn’t remember his own name. He is fitted with a past of 13 years of illegal political opposition from the police archives. When he keeps silent about the crimes of the dictator regime, he will be a free man. The woman he promised to marry, doesn’t recognize him anymore, and thinks he is dead.

Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Laura Benson, Adolph Green, Linda Lavin
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

A grumpy American is suffering during his visit to Europe.

Director: Jacques Rivette
Stars: Bulle Ogier, Benoît Régent, Fejria Deliba
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: France | Switzerland

A drama following 4 women at stage school. Considered by some to be the summation of director Jacques Rivette’s work as a whole.

Director: Euzhan Palcy
Stars: Donald Sutherland, Janet Suzman, Zakes Mokae
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

A white middle class South African suburbanite with no interest in politics agrees to help his black gardener find his jailed son. His investigation opens his eyes to the horrors committed by the secret police and turns him into a target.

Director: David O. Russell
Stars: Bette Davis, Julie Follansbee, William Hickey
Genre: Short
Country: USA | Canada

Early David O. Russell short.

Director: Jirí Barta
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: Czechoslovakia

Laid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it’s not easy at all.

Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Brigitte Sy, Philippe Garrel, Louis Garrel
Genre: Drama
Country: France

The familiar conflicts of a film director planning to make a movie about his life and the confrontation he has with his wife, an actress who was turned down for such project in which she wanted to play herself.

Director: Michael Roemer
Stars: Martin Priest, Ben Lang, Maxine Woods
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

A small-time Jewish racketeer, just out of prison, finds himself in a quandary. Returning to his old neighborhood, he finds that the streets that he and his friends once controlled have now been taken over by blacks and Hispanics. On top of that, he must try to get back with his family, who want nothing to do with him.

Director: Fons Rademakers
Stars: Liv Ullmann, Maximilian Schell, Peter Fonda
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | West Germany | Austria

In Germany, an old man attacks another old man and is arrested. The attacker refuses to speak. A female lawyer is appointed to him. She discovers that the attacker has numbers tattooed on his arm and the attacked man was a German officer.

Director: Bertrand Blier
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Josiane Balasko, Carole Bouquet
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France

A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband’s very difficult to accept.

Director: Frédéric Rossif
Stars: Philippe Meyer
Genre: Documentary
Country: France

A two-part TV documentary on World War II, made exclusively from archive footage.

Director: Eliseo Subiela
Stars: Lorenzo Quinteros, Noemí Frenkel, Hugo Soto
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Spain

Roberto is an insurance salesman who dreams of writing his own novel. When he meets Estela, a young woman about to commit suicide, it serves him as material to make this work.

Director: Otar Iosseliani
Stars: Sigalon Sagna, Saly Badji, Binta Cissé
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France | West Germany | Italy

The film depicts daily life in an Senegalian village. The people sleep, eat, make love, pray for rain, et cetera, while civilization, by way of timber trucks and tree fellers, is slowly encroaching.

Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia

A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.

Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Sabine Azéma, Pascale Vignal
Genre: Drama, War
Country: France

Intense character study of men and women driven by an overpowering obsession with the past.

Director: Percy Adlon
Stars: Marianne Sägebrecht, Brad Davis, Judge Reinhold
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA | West Germany

A kindly but thieving shopaholic tries to turn her mistakes around, but does so by becoming a skilled computer hacker, something that could only get her into more trouble despite her goal to impress her beloved family.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short by Stan Brakhage which mixes and overlaps various footage filmed in Mesa Verde.

Director: Robert Denny, David Hoffman
Stars: Norman Rose, Adolf Galland, Hans Adolf Jakobson
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Through interviews with former World War II fighter aces, “How Hitler Lost the War” examines the theory that the German Armed Forces substantially won and then lost the war in Europe before 1942. That had it not been for the political and military mistakes of Adolf Hitler, the United States would have had to stand alone against a Nazi Europe allied with an even more powerful Japan, and face a future that is barely imaginable.

Director: Juraj Jakubisko
Stars: Bolek Polívka, Borek Dlouhý, Ivan Drozdy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia | West Germany

Pepe and Prengel, returning from war, meet Ester and both fall in love with the girl and live together in a deserted house. Fanatic communist, Zelmira, wants to turn their world upside-down.

Director: Adrian Maben
Stars: Adrian Maben, Candice Bergen, Tina Brown
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: West Germany

A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. He’s on the go from L.A., to Paris, to Monte-Carlo, to Berlin, where he was a youth until he escaped from the Nazis in 1936. We see him on shoots, interviewing models, and discussing his work. It’s not art and it’s not good taste, he tells students. We meet June, his Australian-born wife, whom he married in 1948. Three actresses talk about working with Newton and how posing is different from acting. A heart attack in 1973 helps Newton re-focus, resulting in more personal photographic projects.

Director: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Stars: Sara Lewinstein, David Mandell, Suzi Mandell
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: USA

A collection of profiles of people dead from AIDS who are remembered in the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Director: Coline Serreau
Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Firmine Richard, Pierre Vernier
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: France