RareFilm Rare and Selected Movies Archive | Request RareFilms

Set during the days of the Roman Empire. A simple village is raided by Roman troops, and most of the people are whisked off to be slaves or killed. Three women survive and set off to liberate their people. When they arrive at the Roman city, they team up with the local underground to seek vengeance and liberation of the slaves.
Read More »

Calvin Churchill, a confidence-man, and his sidekick/stooge, “Clip” McGurk, are being pursued by an Internal Revenue agent, Henry Potke, for their failure to file an income-tax on the advice of a shyster lawyer. They are hiding out at the Desert Springs Hotel-Resort, where Calvin is working a scam by posing as a stratosphere-flyer who is looking at making Desert Springs the base of his operations. A rich airplane manufacturer sees a chance to get rid of a stratosphere balloon that he built for an unsuccessful expedition at a great loss. Calvin intends to take the money and run but his estranged wife, Alice, now a tennis instructor at the resort promises to come back to him if he will reform. Alas, reformation does not come easy for Calvin, especially when “Clip” is around, and Henry is closing in.
Read More »

Determined to no longer work for anyone else, Jérôme tries to set up his own company, no matter the cost and despite his wife’s reluctance. Ugo, their 11-year-old son, plays tennis and wants to become a champion. To do so, he must get into the French national tennis training school at Roland Garros.
Like his father, Ugo is ready to do anything to achieve his aims. Together, Ugo and Jérôme come to learn that you can’t bend the rules in order to succeed.
Read More »

Tam, a timid loner, is bullied regularly by his fellow pupils at school. He is met with similar rejection and suspicion within the narrow confines of his parents’ dingy home, where his father beats him. One day Tam arranges online to meet Phum at a derelict swimming pool. They are both looking for sex, but their encounter leaves them with a feeling of comfort and security. A close bond develops between the two boys and, before long, they are roaming the rubbish heaps and dark corners of the city together, day and night. Phum opens a door for Tam, revealing a fantastical parallel universe full of spirits and dangerous encounters. Although he feels safe and loved for the first time in his life, Tam can no longer differentiate between dream and reality and finds himself increasingly drawn into a spiral of paranoia and violence. In his feature debut Boonyawatana leads his protagonist into an ambiguous microcosm full of chasms, at the same time cleverly toying with the conventions of different genres.
Read More »

Fernando arrives at the island of Menorca and gets embroiled in the comedic misadventures of various of its inhabitants.
Read More »

Jonas is already head of the family at just 12 years of age. He has been helping his two younger siblings and supporting his mother, Sabine, since his father left. Sabine is very loving towards her children but she often loses her patience and disappears into her room for the day. Mysterious demons drive her to spend a weekend away to relax in the “sunny valley”. But the weekend grows into weeks in which the three children hear nothing from their mother. Food and money have long since run out, the house has become more and more like a haunted castle: a spiderweb house. Jonas tries his best to maintain the appearance of an intact family. On the hunt for something to eat, he meets a young man, Felix Count of Gütersloh, who speaks in rhymes and declares himself to be not quite right in the head. Rather like a guardian angel, he takes Jonas under his wing and shows him how to get by in a world without adults. The film is less a social drama than a modern-day fairy tale shot in black and white. The audience is immersed in the eerily beautiful world of the children which unfolds its own particular magic.
Read More »

Huzur Biswamghar Roy is a rich landowner who lives in a palace with his wife and son and his many servants. His passion – his wife would call it his addiction – is music and he spends a great deal of his fortune on concerts held for the locals in his magnificent music room. His wealth is in decline however. His lands are being eroded by the local river and he pays for the concert he arranges for his son’s coming of age party by selling some of the family jewels. When his neighbor Ganguli invites him to a party at his house, Roy decides to one up him and organizes a lavish party for the same day – costing him the last of the jewels. After his wife and son are killed in a storm, Roy becomes something of a recluse, closing up the music room. Now, many years later he decides to have one final concert, spending the last of his money to again outdo – and spite – Ganguli.
Read More »

A classic Risi of the late 60s. This time his biting humor doesn’t deal with social or political issues but seven situations leaning on absurdity.
Read More »

A young girl, Jane gets a job as a maid to a lecherous old billionaire. During her time there he dies, and decides to leave his money to the object of his desire, rather than his own son. His son’s wife however is less than happy about this and sets in motion a chain of sexual dalliances and murder.
Read More »

In 1917, in the red light district Storyville, New Orleans, the prostitute Hattie lives with her twelve year-old daughter Violet in the fancy brothel of Madame Nell, where she works. Photographer Ernest J. Bellocq has an attraction to Hallie and Violet and he is an habitué of the whorehouse. One day, Madame Nell auctions Violet’s virginity and the winner pays the fortune of US$ 400 to spend the night with the girl. Then Hattie marries a wealthy client and moves to Saint Louis, leaving Violet in the brothel alone. Violet decides to marry Bellocq and she moves to his house. Until the day that Hattie, who has overcome her past, comes to Bellocq’s house with the intention to take Violet with her.
Read More »