A muted, yet provocative composition on the changing face of the labor movement – or more appropriately, its immobility – in Western Europe in the 1970s, Johan van der Keuken’s Springtime: Three Portraits articulates the struggle of the working class under the protracted climate of an austere, stagnant global economy (stemming in part from the […]
The film opens with a disorienting, vérité-like shot of desperate urgency as William Keane (Damian Lewis) walks up to a ticketing booth and insists on speaking with a specific agent before shoving a frayed, newspaper clipping into the narrow glass opening as the agent steps forward and asking him if remembers the girl in the […]
In 1998, retired actress Zalika Souley, the grand dame and first professional actress of Nigerien cinema, was honored with the country’s Knight of the National Legion of Honor medal for her pioneering work in the film industry, a bittersweet ceremony that, for the now financially struggling middle-aged woman, would prove to be equally validating, celebratory, […]
Dorota Kedzierzawska continues to demonstrate her strength in directing young actors (particularly evident in the performance of the lead actor, Piotr Jagielski) that she had earlier illustrated in The Crows with her latest film I Am. Recalling Ken Loach’s Kes or Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows in its modern day, pseudo-Dickensian tale of instinctual survival shot […]
A gaunt, weary priest named Father Joseph Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) arrives at a quaint village inn to rest for the evening, eating his scant portion of bread alongside a bawdy, drunken patron named Wolodkowicz (Zygmunt Zintel) who is quick to ridicule his asceticism. The voluptuous barmaid, Adwosia (Maria Chwalibóg), goaded by Wolodkowicz into foretelling the […]
Night Train opens to the eerie sound of a soulful and atmospheric vocal melody against an acute overhead shot of a busy train station. On an overnight train bound for a seaside resort, an agitated man named Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk), oddly obscured behind a pair of sunglasses, approaches the conductor (Helena Dàbrowska) to explain that […]