Browsing: Conversations

CLUB ZERO happens at an international boarding school, where an unassuming, yet rigorous, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) joins the teaching staff to instruct a new class on “conscious eating.” Her impressionable teenage students each have their own reasons for joining the class – to improve fitness, reduce their carbon footprint, or get extra credit. Although early lectures focus on mindful consumption, Miss Novak’s discussions soon become increasingly disordered and extreme. A suspicious headmistress, concerned parents and the failing health of her students lead everyone to question the inscrutable Miss Novak’s motivations for teaching the class. As a few devoted pupils…

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In THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, a visionary new thriller that drops viewers into an extraordinary world where mutations in human genetics cause people to transform into hybrid creatures, François (Roman Duris) does everything he can to save his wife, who is affected by this mysterious condition. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, François embarks with Emile (Paul Kircher), their 16-year-old son, on a quest to find her with help from a local police officer (Adèle Exarchopoulos). From acclaimed director Thomas Cailley, the film world premiered as the opening night selection of Cannes Un Certain Regard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWAJXTcEEOU The…

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One could call this psychological thriller/drama from Iranian director Mani Haghighi a high concept film, as it very much hangs on an intriguing central premise. There have been several films which deal with the idea of doppelgangers, or even clones, and both of these ideas hover around this plot. However, Haghighi takes it one step further by asking us to imagine what would happen if a husband and wife both had doubles and, further, what would happen if these doubles interacted. The English title is Subtraction but in some ways the dilemma of the film could be better expressed by multiplication. The complexities certainly multiply…

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In their feature debut, In the Land of Brothers [+], showing in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, directorial duo Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi focus on three Afghan refugees – Mohammad, Leila and Qasem – who set about starting their lives in Iran, full of hope, only to face decades of hardship. Cineuropa: Why did you want to tell a story – or, rather, stories – that take place over decades? It’s generations’ worth of trauma. Raha Amirfazli: We started by writing about Leila. We wanted to turn it into a short, but we understood it wasn’t the whole story of Afghan refugees in Iran. You couldn’t convey…

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In Blaga’s Lessons, Bulgaria’s Oscar Entry, directed by Stephan Komandarev, when a retired, recently widowed teacher falls prey to a phone scam, she’s left robbed of her life savings. Desperate to pull through, she accepts an alluring yet suspicious offer for work that will turn her life upside down and force her to make a decision beyond her principles. https://youtu.be/8Xb7i3m6jbU?si=EDP_CQRJju8LzPTp The following is our interview with Stephan Komandarev, director of Blaga’s Lessons:  Bijan Tehrani: Blaga’s Lesson deals with elderly abuse by making them victims of fraud crimes, what motivated you to make it? Also please tell us about the trilogy that…

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VERA Austrian Oscar Entry directed by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, is about the actress Vera Gemma who lives in the shadow of her famous late father, the Italo-Western actor Giuliano Gemma. She drifts through Roman high society, tired of countless plastic surgeries and superficial relationships. When, after a car accident, she takes the injured son of a working-class family to her heart, a moral parable unfolds that is as fascinating as it is tragic, trying once again to unite the rich with the poor, the lost with the found. The fact that contradictions are not only admitted but embraced…

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In Marry My Dead Body, Taiwan’s Oscar Entry, directed by Cheng Wei-Hao, one day a police officer finds a red wedding envelope, only to find out that the owner of the red envelope is in fact a ghost from the other side asking for the officer’s hand in marriage before reincarnation. What will happen when a human and a ghost form a special bond? Closing film to the 2022 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, the largest and the longest-running film festival in Taiwan, MARRY MY DEAD BODY transcends the boundaries of both death and gender! https://youtu.be/BCFyt7GkOmY?si=EsOc6a8alZZLY-tJ Cinema Without Borders: What…

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BEHIND THE HAYSTACKS happens during the 2015 refugee crisis on the Greece-North Macedonia border and  seen through the eyes of three morally culpable family members with overlapping and contradicting versions. A middle-aged fisherman living on Greece’s northern border, who is drowning in debt, starts to smuggle migrants across the border lake, in exchange for a hefty fee. His wife, a housewife and devout churchgoer, is seeking the truth in God’s Word, while their daughter tries to define her own life within an oppressive environment. Until a tragic incident strikes the family, pushing the three heroes to face their own personal…

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Neither a conventional biopic nor a traditional concert film, JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE is a raw and intimate portrait of the legendary folk singer and activist that shifts back and forth through time as it follows Joan on her final tour and delves into her extraordinary archive, including newly discovered home movies, diaries, artwork, therapy tapes, and audio recordings. Baez is remarkably revealing about her life on and off stage – from her lifelong emotional struggles to her civil rights work with MLK and a heartbreaking romance with a young Bob Dylan. A searingly honest look at a…

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From Signe Baumane, director of Rocks in My Pockets, comes a new award-winning animated feature about a spirited young woman determined to find love in the bewildering world. My Love Affair With Marriage follows Zelma on her 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe. Told from a woman’s point of view, the film blends historical, biological, societal, and emotional arcs with a lively sense of humor and musical numbers. This animated film for adults tackles the issues of love, gender norms, domestic violence, fantasies and toxic relationships to propel…

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