In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially, slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the farmers. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes, Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.
Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in the hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.
In the 12th century's Andalusia lives Ibn Rushd a prominent Islamic philosopher with his wife Zeinab and daughter Salma. The principality is ruled by Khalifa ElMansour who has two sons, ElNasser, an intellectual that likes Ibn Rush and is in love with his daughter Salma. The younger son Abdallah is more into dancing and poetry, spending most of his times with the gypsy family and getting the daughter pregnant. The Khalifa is depending on the extremists to build his army granting them more power which they use to combat artists and philosophers. The extremists succeed in recruiting Abd Allah and train him to kill his father. Events go on where Marawan, the gypsy singer, is killed and Ibn Rushd's books are burnt. Adapted from the real life of Ibn Rushd AlMasir is Chahine's statement against extremism.
The end of an affair from the woman's point of view.
An actress, who goes all over rural France with her monologe "Sex and Crime", meets and falls in love with a man, since that moment starts helping him in his plays.
An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.
Reda, summoned to accompany his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca, complies reluctantly - as he preparing for his baccalaureat and, even more important, has a secret love relationship. The trip across Europe in a broken-down car is also the departure of his father: upon arrival in Mecca, both Reda and his father are not the characters they were at the start of the movie. Avoiding the hackneyed theme of the return to the homeland, the film uses the departure to renew a connection between two generation.
A woman and her seven children live on a farm in Southern France. In spite of the hard work and the mediocre accommodation, their life would be a happy one, but for one person: the owner of the farm, an egotistic and authoritarian individual who is also the lover of the woman and the father of all her children. The farmer handles them as his property, uses them as cheap labour to work in the fields, and denies them the right to leave the farm. It is only the love of the woman for her children that allows them to endure their situation; but even for her, disenchantment has set in.
Bo is a transexual prostitute in Brussels who left home after being abused by her father. She's infuatuated with a neighbor and suspected by the police in a series of transexual murders. In order to clear herself she must turn detective.
Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village in northern Palestine to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Some vow to continue the struggle, most simply struggle to survive. Unsparingly detailing the impact of the nakba (disaster) on Palestinian life and society and the refugees' often-contentious relationship with their reluctant Lebanese hosts, Gate of the Sun spans generations, mixing personal stories with historical events.
Beginning with perestroika and reaching its peak after the demise of the Soviet Union, pessimistic youth sub-culture films abounded in Russia and the former republics. Anguely V Rayou is another example of these "youth without future" films. Based on the novel Two Notebooks by Piotr Kojevnikov, the action takes place in the Leningrad of 1975, when the "stagnation" era is at its peak. Two teenagers, Micha and Galia, are experiencing a slow death in the slums of the city. Galia's aunt is going crazy in her desperation. Micha's mother is killed by a drunk. One of their friends has committed suicide. These kids are typical of a generation wasted by alcohol and misfortune. Some are bound to become outcasts, some will be destroyed, and others will be sacrificed in Afghanistan. The title is ironic, as there is neither paradise nor angels in this story.
An expatriated French novelist returns to Paris when she learns that her childhood home is being placed on the auction block.
Sexy, gritty and as provocative as a lap dance, The Bathers takes an insider's look at the lives of six women working as dancers at a seedy Parisian peep show. Governed by their overprotective boss, the girls' routine of glittery neon lights and lecherous customers is soon disrupted when an enigmatic stranger enters the scene. Now, drugs, sex and bickering all take a back seat as the girls unite to save this man haunted by a mysterious past and unforgiving demons. A fascinating glimpse into a world of back alleys and primal instincts, The Bathers transports us to a netherworld where the show always goes on.
Just before taking an irrevocable and tragic step, Caroline talks to Claire, her lycée friend. Later, Claire gathers five other school friends, and tells them Caroline's secret. The six agree to wage a guerrilla war against their philosophy teacher, the sarcastic and belittling M. Terrien, the cause of Caroline's despair. After seeking advice from Mayard, the school's guidance counselor and a leftist with a police record, the six look for evidence that could get Terrien fired. They strike gold, and then raise the stakes. Sarah, one of the six, hatches a deadly plan.
Lunettes and Myope: two ways of resisting the world. Identical and opposites, face to face or, more often, back to back, in a small room in a timeless space. Twins and adversaries, these two girls make one: Lunettes uses her glasses to help her understand the world, or at least accept it; Myope can't see, except within herself, and lost in her blurred, but sharp, experience of the world, rebels continuously. Incited by Lunettes, Myope creates (in the same city and climate, but in another dimension) two characters: Pierrot and Agathe. To a certain degree, these two are a disjointed response to Myope, Lunettes, neighbors, and distant representatives. It's very hot. The inhabitants are interested in fountains and shadows. They build cool cabins, hanging curtains over the balcony balustrades. Asphalt sticks to the soles of sandals and when the wind blows, the canopies flap above the café terraces.
Mimi isn't a star, she's just someone. A close-up of the singularity of a real life. An encounter of someone's particular story, romance, fantasy and territories.
Nicola, a young filmmaker, drags an amateur film crew along to meet Matthieu, a paralyzed poet in an electric wheelchair, who lives in a mill. As time goes by and nothing really takes shape, Nicola realizes the inanity of his project, the film slips more and more out of his control and he becomes increasingly absorbed in a ludicrous, poetical search for inspiration.
The story is inspired by the biblical myth of Lazarus. The main character is called Lazarus who was a follower of Jesus, brother of Martha and Mary who was resurrected by Jesus.
Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.
