
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.
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Tag Archives: 2000s
Una semana solos / A Week Alone (2007) Celina Murga, Natalia Gomez Alarcon, Ignacio Giménez, Lucas Del Bo, Comedy, Drama

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.
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Izolator / Warsaw Dark (2008) Christopher Doyle, Anna Przybylska, Adam Ferency, Leslaw Zurek, Thriller

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.
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Se Eu Fosse Ladrão, Roubava / If I Were a Thief… I’d Steal (2013) Paulo Rocha, Norberto Barroca, Márcia Breia, Joana Bárcia, Drama

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.
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Roman de gare / Crossed Tracks (2007) Claude Lelouch, Fanny Ardant, Dominique Pinon, Audrey Dana, Drama

The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?
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Nachthelle (2015) Florian Gottschick, Anna Grisebach, Benno Fürmann, Vladimir Burlakov, Drama, Mystery

A drama with a supernatural edge, this genre-crossing gem finds two couples visiting a home from their past, and sexual tension that brings out the worst in each other. Long-buried grudges resurface and it seems unlikely the couples will return intact. Faced with an outcome that will upset their delicate balance of happiness, the world offers them a bizarre opportunity to correct it.
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Peace (2010) Kazuhiro Sôda, Shiro Hashimoto, Hiroko Kashiwagi, Toshio Kashiwagi, Documentary, Drama, History

What is peace? What is coexistence? And what are the basis for them? PEACE is a visual-essay-like observational documentary, which contemplates these questions by observing the daily lives of people and cats in Okayama city, Japan, where life and death, acceptance and rejection are intermingled.
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The Trip (2010) Michael Winterbottom, Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Paul Popplewell, Comedy, Drama

When Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country’s finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon.
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Noite Escura / In the Darkness of the Night (2004) João Canijo, Fernando Luís, Rita Blanco, Beatriz Batarda, Drama, Crime

João Canijo latest movie adapts a Greek tragedy “Ifigénia en Aulis” to a provincial Portuguese family that has to deal with the Russian Mafia after a deal went wrong. In a place where everything is bought and sold even the youngest daughter may have to be offered for prostitution to make up for a deal that went terribly wrong. “Noite Escura” deals with the emotions of a small family that runs a provincial whorehouse, having to sell their youngest in order to survive.
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L’insurgée / Restless (2009) Laurent Perreau, Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Éric Caravaca, Drama

Maurice (Michel Piccoli) is a composer, and a longtime member of the resistance. By chance, he shares a house with his teenager granddaughter. Claire, at 17, is eager to experience all sorts of things and the sooner the better, and rebels against anyone who wants to stop him. Between the swimming and the first encounters with the boys, she spends her life, hosted by his grandfather after being orphaned. But this interaction is difficult: both avoid themselves in their large house, escaping through the windows if necessary, living in mutual incomprehension. Yet, they have something in common: both are insurgents in their own way.
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