An early encounter in Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine humorously, but astutely illustrates the aimlessly resigned plight of the impassive, perennially unemployed director Bahman Farjami (Bahman Farmanara) as he apologetically acknowledges to a former actor turned businessman that he hasn’t made a film in 24 years. The episode, which occurs after Bahman visits the […]
Based on the autobiographical novel by a German international correspondent who published her wartime journal under the pseudonym Anonyma, Max Färberböck’s A Woman in Berlin presents a raw and sobering account of the waning days of World War II as the Russian army seized control of a town in war torn Berlin and, consequently, lorded […]
From the seemingly mundane (if logistically nightmarish) objective of documenting the annual mass exodus of migrant workers from industrial cities as they return home to their rural villages in time for the Chinese New Year, Lixin Fan poignantly captures the dissolution of family in the face of globalism, poverty, and disenfranchisement in Last Train Home. […]
At a “half-open” detention facility and work camp on the island of Imrali, a group of hopeful, but resigned men ritualistically converge on the entrance of the main penitentiary ward: first, for the disbursement of weekly mail and subsequently, for the eagerly anticipated posting of the list of prisoners authorized for a one-week furlough. A […]
Part social realism in its searing depiction of the plight of the underprivileged against the transforming economy of an increasingly modernized Turkey, and part poetic essentialism in its psychological portrait of a desperate man succumbing to the mania of a delusive, blind faith, Yilmaz Güney and Serif Gören’s Umut (Hope) captures the precarious atmosphere of […]
From the casual and personably familiar (and inferentially self-confident) running commentary of the film’s introductory behind-the-scenes footage of the cast and crew, Sacha Guitry sets the infectiously picaresque and disarming tone of The Story of a Cheat. An interstitial silhouette of Guitry’s profile provides the clever transition from real-life auteur to fictional character as the […]