Tag Archives: 2000s

Tamar, 35, a beautiful young woman, lives alone with her two daughters. She can’t restrain her sexual appetite and gives herself to several men of the village. Shai, a young veterinary, just moved in the region and soon falls under the spell of Tamar. They quickly become lovers but will Tamar be satisfied with only one partner?
Read More »

Investigative journalist Fabian Groys enjoys great freedom since the stories he uncovers make for strong sales. He works for a political news magazine in their Berlin head office. In this context, his arrogance raises few eyebrows.
Read More »

In a quirky, small town, situated in the outskirts of everything, 14-year-old Martin is getting ready for one of the most formal transitions from boy to man; the communion. It’s 1976, music’s in the air and hormones are blossoming. But in the midst of it all Martin’s mother suddenly passes away and her tragic death trickers a series of events that not only changes Martin’s life forever, but also affects everyone else in the local community. An intense, humorous and evocative story about how life and death demands a transition in us all.
Read More »

BOYS tells the story of Sieger, a sporty, rather quiet 15-year-old boy who discovers love during the summer holidays. Sieger is training in the new athletics team for the national relay championships and meets the intriguing and unpredictable Marc. The friendship that develops seems nothing out of the ordinary, but Sieger secretly harbours stronger feelings for Marc. He engages in a lonely struggle with himself when it emerges that Marc is also in love with him. With his best friend Stef, Sieger discovers a motocross track outside the village. Events soon take on a momentum of their own as Sieger quickly becomes involved with Jessica. At last, he counts for something in the eyes of his tough older brother Eddy, who is secretly using the track to tear around on a moped. Sieger keeps quiet about this to his father, who often clashes with the rebellious Eddy since their mother’s death. Sieger tries to make peace between the two, but his mind is elsewhere, as he finds it increasingly …
Read More »

The lonely and silent rider Tae-suk breaks in empty houses and lives a normal life while the owners are traveling. He does not steal anything and moves from house to house without any loss other than food, and he cleans the houses, provides small repairs or washes some clothes to pay for the hospitality. When he enters in the house of Sun-hwa, he does not see the woman that is wounded in her room after being beaten up on by her abusive husband Min-gyu Lee. Tae-suk helps the hurt woman and when Min-gyu returns, he hits the husband with golf balls and Sun-hwa leaves her husband with Tae-suk on his motorcycle. When they break in the house of an old man, they find that the man is dead and Tae-suk provides funeral service for him. However, his son returns and Tae-suk and Sun-hwa are arrested by two abusive police detectives. He is sent to prison and Sun-hwa is forced to return home. But she never forgets him.
Read More »

Israel 1956. Rachel, a Jew, rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz where she is working as a teacher. It brings back memories of her experiences in The Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. September 1944. Rachel is in trouble when her hiding place is bombed by allied troops. She gets in contact with a man from the resistance and joins a group of Jews who are to be smuggled across the Biesbosch by boat to the freed South Netherlands. Germans from a patrol boat murder them all however. Only Rachel is able to escape. She is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers. When Kuipers’ son is captured after trying to smuggle weapons, he asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze. Soon she will find out the attack in the Biesbosch wasn’t a coincidence.
Read More »

Having packed up her possessions to move in with her lover, Laure is more unsettled than she appears. Needing to get out and have a change of scenery, she jumps in her car to go to have dinner with friends–only to become stuck in a terrible traffic jam. Laure completely forgot about the mass transit strike that has thrown the city into chaos. But Laure feels good in her car, the only place she has for herself right now. As she takes in the sights and sounds around her–the blare of horns and arguments, the shimmer of lights and camaraderie–Laure notices a calm and self-assured stranger, Jean, approach her car. Soon thereafter, she opens her car door door to the man who–that night–will change her life.
Read More »

The movie is set in the Pacific Northwest; specifically, Washington state. We know this from a glimpse of a license plate, the craftsman architecture of the two houses, and the mature, rich landscapes in between. The setting, like the scrutiny of the four main character’s lives, is defined by the narrowness of the camera’s field-of view. The one commercial street in town is only seen in the reflection of a store window, a shot of a non-descript auto-yard, or the tunnel of a tree-lined suburban sidewalk. The lush, wooded landscape is understood as an immediate presence in the domestic and professional lives of the characters; a steep hill, railroad tracks, a rushing stream, and a path over an old steel bridge are revisited again and again by the characters in their capacities as lovers, parents and friends.
Read More »

The movie is based on the infamous “Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted in 1971. A makeshift prison is set up in a research lab, complete with cells, bars and surveillance cameras. For two weeks 20 male participants are hired to play prisoners and guards. The ‘prisoners’ are locked up and have to follow seemingly mild rules, and the ‘guards’ are told simply to retain order without using physical violence. Everybody is free to quit at any time, thereby forfeiting payment. In the beginning the mood between both groups is insecure and rather emphatic. But soon quarrels arise and the wardens employ ever more drastic sanctions to confirm their authority.
Read More »

In Los Angeles, Annie and Darren are a married couple in a comfortable relationship that’s lost its spark. They talk constantly, express affection verbally, start the day with high-end coffee, end the afternoon with gelato, shop at the farmer’s market, prepare dinner as a team, do crossword puzzles, and talk in bed. Darren wonders if a one-night stand would help bring more sex to their marriage. Soon, the two of them are laying out the ground rules and talking through the mechanics of each finding a lover for one night. They agree to give each other no details about the experience. The night comes. Will this give their relationship a needed boost?
Read More »

Jorge Queiroga’s magic realist drama Behind the Clouds concerns young Paulo, a little boy bereft of his father, whose widowed mother ardently refuses to grant him permission to meet his paternal granddad. When Paulo reaches the age of 10, he expressly defies his mother’s orders by making a secret journey to his grandfather’s home, in a remote part of the country. Once there, he finds a fantastic invention: a little red car with the ability to take him soaring high into the clouds, and the added ability to send him spiraling backward in time. Alas, Paulo’s grandfather grows increasingly distraught over the time travel element, and in the process, Paulo arrives at some sobering and disillusioning realizations about the mystery surrounding his clan.
Read More »

An older European woman becomes enchanted with a young Dominican woman who must struggle to make ends meet. Love brings a flow of entanglements in a drama which unfolds like palm trees in an irresistible storm.
Read More »

A group of children, age 7 through 14, are left home alone at a house in a secluded community in the countryside. Their innocence is gradually corrupted as they experiment with rule-breaking, ultimately leading to house break-ins around the neighborhood.
Read More »

Prominent cinematographer Christopher Doyle continues to hone his talents as a director with this thriller set in Eastern Europe and inspired by the as-yet-unsolved murder of a Polish politician in 2001. A young prostitute is spending the evening with a prominent Polish official when he’s suddenly assassinated in Warsaw. In the aftermath of the hit, the triggerman takes the prostitute to an apartment and subjects her to a complex personality replacement program designed to wipe out any memories she may have retained about the evening’s events.
Read More »

1920s. Vitalino, a small farmer from São Vicente sees his father die of the epidemic which decimated the country. Some years later, of all the brothers, Vitalino is the strongest and takes his father’s place in the house. But the village is too small for his aspirations and he decides to head to Brazil, leaving his sisters in charge of the household. In parallel with Vitalino’s story, If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal portrays the world of Paulo Rocha rummaging through his films and ghosts over the years.
Read More »