04. - 10. 11. 2019
Ahmed is a 13-year-old boy who gives the impression of being a perfect machine operated by the doctrines of pure Islam. Under the influence of a bigoted imam he becomes closed off in an ideological shell. His life in liberal Belgian society turns into a series of rejections and hatreds that he projects primarily onto a friendly and unreserved teacher. Ahmed’s fanatical faith leads him to an extreme act. In their latest film, two masters of social realism look at how deep humanity is hidden beneath the load of religious doctrine and what can turn religious fanaticism around – education, social openness, or first love. Show more
Stéphane is a recent addition to a special police unit in a Paris suburb. He and his experienced colleagues, Chris and Gwada, quickly notice increased tension between neighboring gangs. When the three-man team gets into a tight spot when making an arrest, one of the gangs has a drone there ready to record their every move... Inspired by the unrest in Paris in 2005, the film is set in contemporary Montfermeil – the same place where Victor Hugo’s famous misérables rose up. Now, more than 150 years later, the similarity of today’s angry youths in hoodies to Hugo’s Gavroch is more than obvious… This phenomenal debut by director Ladj Ly won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes festival. Show more
The backwater village of Irénée-les-Neiges somewhere in Quebec is shaken by the death of 21-year-old Simon. The pragmatic mayor objects to the arrival of a psychologist – she believes the reclusive community with its modest population of 215 can cope on its own. But the opposite is true: the frigid days drag on forever, the old order has become unsustainable, and mysterious figures are slowly emerging from the fog. Things that seem strange and incomprehensible, though, can sometimes be based in things more familiar than we might wish. This melancholic and witty, poetic and political film by Québécois director Denis Côté takes advantage of the traditional iconography of ghost films to tell a metaphorical tale of our fear of what is “different”. Show more
László Nemes’s feature debut, the drama Son of Saul, was a true sensation. The winner of numerous accolades, including the Grand Prix at Cannes and Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, it expressed the younger generation of directors’ urgent need to abandon the depleted melodramatic portrayal of the Holocaust and find for the subject a novel, dynamic cinematic idiom. Nemes’s second full-length film, Sunset, is set in Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century. The drama follows the 20-year-old Irisz Leiter, who arrives in the city after spending her adolescence years in an orphanage and is suddenly confronted with her past and the dark secrets shrouding her family. Show more
The story is following siblings Stefan, Julia and Tobias, whom are apparently life without problems. Stefan is a pilot, he has a fast car and many lovers. One day his daughter is lost and he starts to feel an urge for a more serious relationship. Julia tries to refresh her marriage with a prolonged weekend in Italy, where she finds a hurt dog. Tobias, a father of three wants to study in university but he needs to take care of his ill father as well... Show more
After 18 long years, Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi returns to international cinema with On Body and Soul, the unconventional love story of two people, each with their own affliction: an aging financial director of an abattoir, and a young, withdrawn meat quality inspector. Shocked by the realization that they share the same dreams, both protagonists begin trying to fulfil them. This eccentric, tactile, yet detached romance, with elements of everyday drama and black comedy, suggestively thematizes the dualities of wakefulness and dreaming, animality and humanity, body and soul. Joining cold observation with unusual emotionality, the film taps a vein of distinctive visuality – from its precise, geometrically composed shots and inconspicuous mingling of lyricism and brutality to its symbolic use of colours and focused work with actors. With its use of allusion and metaphorical dreams to speak to many modern-day societal traumas, it could not be clearer why this of all films came away from this year’s Berlinale with the grand prize – the Golden Bear.
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Yoav is a young Israeli who has just arrived in Paris when rather comical circumstances leave him in the bathroom of an empty and cold apartment without his clothes or any other personal belongings. He is saved by Emile and Caroline, a couple living upstairs. Yoav gets some money and clothes to start a new life. Though he may be able to escape the homeland he finds “disgusting, smelly, obscene, and crude,” he cannot escape his identity in Nadav Lapid’s sharp and penetrating satire. No matter what language you’re speaking, certain native synonyms will always stick with you. Show more
Some encounters are only for a moment, some farewells can take a lifetime. So Long, My Son is a superbly constructed family saga depicting the transformations of Chinese society amid the story of a tragedy-stricken married couple. As much an emotional melodrama as it is a penetrating study of cultural and political shifts, the film follows its protagonists over the course of three decades - from the upheavals of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1980s to the troubled prosperity of contemporary Chinese turbo-capitalism. Unpretentious, extraordinarily moving, and masterfully filmed So Long, My Son is proof that big feelings don't need big gestures. Show more
The Turner family belongs to the social class called the “precariat”, teetering at the very edge of poverty where the slightest financial upset could mean catastrophe. In a bid to provide for his family, the father, Ricky, decides to run a franchise as a delivery driver. He is used to working hard and is ready to take up any responsibility. But instead of the freedom promised him he is sunk in a network of predatorial practices, and the desperate struggle for financial survival slowly degrades the family solidarity. The Loach-Laverty creative duo follows up on their Cannes-winning film I, Daniel Blake with an empathetic story about ordinary people trying to maintain at least a semblance of dignity on the margins of society. Show more
Deväťročná Benni – dievča s problémovým správaním a tvárou anjela – je v spisoch vedená ako „narušiteľ systému“. Dievča, ktoré nezapadá do štruktúry nemeckých sociálnych služieb, je plné neovládateľnej zloby, namierenej proti každému, kto je v jej svete prekážkou návratu domov k matke. Tá ju však, bohužiaľ, nezvláda ani v Benniných dobrých obdobiach. Existuje aspoň jeden človek, ktorý by bol schopný dať dievčatku bezpodmienečnú lásku? Strhujúci debut režisérky Nory Fingscheidt, ktorý poháňa vpred fenomenálny výkon mladučkej Heleny Zengel, je príbehom o neutíšiteľnej zlosti i túžbe po skutočnom cite, o limitoch systému starostlivosti o dieťa aj o hraniciach osobnej slobody. Show more
The life’s work of Fritz, a revolting and deformed drunk from Hamburg's San Pauli neighborhood, is the murder of local prostitutes. He hides their bodies in the walls of his attic apartment where the smell of the rotting flesh blends in with that of bachelorhood and the fumes from the Greek restaurant on the ground floor. The case of serial killer Fritz Honka shocked the whole of Germany in the mid-1970s and inspired Fatih Akin to make a film that is a counterpoint to most serial murder thrillers. Instead of a methodical investigation, it offers only chaos, muck, stink, and the virtually haptic experience of Fritz Honka's “hell kitchen”. With an elegance unique to him alone, Akin has created a monstrous artifact that puts the viewer’s resilience to a hard test and undermines the cult of mystery created around serial killings. Show more
When her father has a stroke, Eugenia returns from Paris to her family ranch outside Buenos Aires. After years away from home, she reunites with her mother and her sister Mia, with whom she once had a close bond. All three women are put through emotional trauma and relive their dark family history, which plays out against the backdrop of Argentina’s military dictatorship. One by one, skeletons emerge from their closets, as do the two sisters’ long-dormant jealousy and rivalry, intensified by their uncanny physical resemblance to each other. Like director Trapero’s award-winning The Clan (2015, Best Director at the Venice FF), The Quietude is instilled with the tragedy and horror of the military/political tyranny that reigned for decades in Argentina. Show more
