Inviting favorable comparison to Serik Aprimov’s Glastnost-era muted comedy The Last Stop (a film that ushered the Kazakh new wave), Kyrgyzstan filmmaker Ernest Abdyshaparov spins his own charming, infectious, and delightful pastoral tale on the doldrums of rural life in post Soviet-era central Asian republics in Saratan. Introducing an eclectic cast of characters – a […]
Appropriately presented with the sterile impersonality of a canned, droning informational video business presentation, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott’s The Corporation is a wry and acerbic sprawling meditation on the psychology of a corporation as a human entity (as defined by the judicial system with respect to legal rights and responsibilities). Citing examples of blatant […]
The title of Maren Ade’s quietly observed film is subtly conveyed in passing, a desire expressed by uninhibited rock publicist, Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) to her architect boyfriend, Chris (Lars Eidinger) that their relationship will not be reduced to the banal paradigm of being like “everyone else”. But romanticism soon collides with reality for the couple […]
In the film’s droll, double entendred opening sequence, a breathless woman, Catherine (Aurore Clément), speaks off camera in dulcet, anxious tone as she provides a series of guiding, seemingly appetent directions against the image of a grand piano craned precariously overhead, culminating with a stray tear that falls from her cheek at the point of […]
A young man stranded in a Mexican border town recounts the vivid and tragic story of his older brother who crossed the border with a group of illegal immigrants into the U.S. only to wander for days in the disorienting wilderness – each night piling together for warmth and protection, and each morning, fewer and […]
An outwardly fragile and introspective man named Simon (Stanislas Merhar) stands in a darkened room poring over an audioless film footage of a group of holiday revelers at a seaside resort in Normandy. Repeatedly cueing the film to the excerpt of a beautiful young woman, Ariane (Sylvie Testud) and a friend, Andrée (Olivia Bonamy) overlooking […]