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Afire (German)
While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon and photographer Felix are surprised to encounter Nadja, a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at the holiday home of Felix's family. Nadja soon distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel, not only because of her passionate liaison with lifeguard Devid but also because her brutal honesty forces Leon to confront his artistic inadequacies. As Nadja and Leon grow closer, an encroaching forest fire threatens the group and pushes the writer to discover whether he can truly care for anything beyond himself. Christian Petzold's acclaimed latest film was the winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
Director: Christian Petzold
Starring: Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, Matthias Brandt
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Everyone Will Burn (Spanish)
Plagued with darkness of the heart, Maria Jose is prepared to face the end of her life when a strange girl visits her. As residents in her village begin to suffer horrific deaths, Maria Jose is accused of summoning an evil that has been whispered as a local legend for generations and must confront her past or risk fulfilling a prophecy that would bring about the end of the world.
Director: David Hebrero
Starring: Macarena Gomez, Rodolfo Sancho, Ana Milán
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Inshallah a Boy (Arabic)
A widow pretends to be pregnant with a son to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan's patriarchal inheritance laws. This thriller from the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival is Jordan's Official Entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards.
Director: Amjad Al Rasheed
Starring: Mouna Hawa, Haitham Alomari, Yumna Marwan, Salwa Nakkara
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Cérémonie - Criterion Collection (French)
The crowning achievement of Claude Chabrol's career is a riveting study of class dynamics and the psychology of crime, starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire as a pair of outsiders who form a mysterious alliance that gradually goes haywire.
Director: Claude Chabrol
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel
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Lie with Me (French)
Novelist Stéphane Belcourt has agreed to sponsor the bicentenary of a famous cognac brand. This is the opportunity to return for the first time to the city where he grew up. There, he meets Lucas, the son of his first love. Memories flood in irrepressible desire, bodies coming together, a passion that must be silenced… This first love was called Thomas. They were 17 years old.
Director: Olivier Peyon
Starring: Guilllaume de Tonquédec, Victor Belmondo, Doriane Chastanet, Julien de Saint Jean, Jeremy Gillet
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The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse - Criterion Collection (French)
Everyday life becomes an adventure in the wide-eyed fables and fantasies of Albert Lamorisse. Balancing imaginative whimsy with documentary-like authenticity, his beloved short films Bim, the Little Donkey; White Mane; and the Academy Award-winning The Red Balloon find unforgettable emotional, spiritual, and moral resonance in the realms of children and animals, while his captivating but now rarely seen features Stowaway in the Sky and Circus Angel exult in the glories of two of his greatest loves: nature and flight. With their astonishing cinematography and purity of spirit, these five enchanting works invite viewers of all ages to experience the wonder, mystery, and poignancy of the world anew.
Director: Albert Lamorisse
Starring: Allen Baron, Pascal Lamorisse, Alain Emery, Philippe Avron
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Return to Dust (Mandarian)
In rural Gaotai County, two lonely, middle-aged outcasts are pushed into an arranged marriage by their families. Ma is a humble farmer with little to offer his timid and sickly wife, Cao, except for a small, abandoned house on a barren patch of land. From just a few seeds, their newly planted crops take root and flourish; similarly, an unexpected bond between them starts to blossom. As seasons pass, their dedication to each other grows stronger, but change and adversity soon threaten their idyllic existence.
Director: Li Ruijun
Starring: Wu Renlin, Hai Qing, Guangrui Yang, Dengping Zhao
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Snow White Dies at the End (Macedonian)
A storytelling fly narrates the bizarre tales of seven lives on society's edge. A gynecologist mentors a junkie, three buddies dream amid video store aisles, and a radio host with Asperger's finds love in a tree-clothing artist.
Director: Kristijan Risteski
Starring: Natasha Petrovic, Verica Nedeska, Sashko Kocev
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The Bridge Complete Series (Danish)
The landmark series that started the Nordic Noir genre, The Bridge follows Detective Saga Noren as she and her colleagues investigate a string of crimes committed around Oresund Bridge, the conduit between Sweden and Denmark.
Director: Rumle Hammerich, Henrik Georgsson, Charlotte Sieling, Lisa Siwe, Morten Arnfred
Starring: Sofia Helin, Thure Lindhardt, Mikael Birkkjaer, Sarah Boberg, Kim Bodnia, Puk Scharbau, Dag Malmberg, Emil Birk Hartmann, Lars Simonsen
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Eight Mountains (Italian)
An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains is a cinematic experience as intimate as it is monumental. Adapting an award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, Felix van Groeningen, and Charlotte Vandermeersch portray, through observant detail and stunning landscape photography, the profound relationship between Pietro and Bruno, who first meet as children in an Alpine village. Years later, the estranged friends reunite, after the passing of Pietro's father, to realize his dream of rebuilding a ruined cabin on a mountain slope. This emotional project, and their subsequent explorations of the mountains, create a strong bond between the two individual dreams, and the demands of society, ultimately driving them to pursue irrevocably divergent paths.
Director: Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix Van Groeningen
Starring: Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Filippo Timi
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The Promised Land (Danish)
The story of Ludvig Kahlen who pursued his lifelong dream: To make the heath bring him wealth and honor.
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Gustav Lindh, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Felix Kramer
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The Runner - Criterion Collection (Persian)
Childhood takes on mythic dimensions in one of the defining works of post revolutionary Iranian cinema. Inspired by director Amir Naderi's boyhood, The Runner is lit from within by Madjid Niroumand's electrifying performance as a young orphan fending for himself on the streets of a port city, determined to rise above his circumstances working odd jobs, passing time with friends, learning to read and running, always running, toward the future. Water, fire, the human body in motion: in hypnotic images of lyrical power, Naderi finds unexpected glory in the world of a boy suspended between modernity and elemental natural forces as he chases his path forward.
Director: Amir Naderi
Starring: Madjid Niroumand, Abbas Nazeri, Musa Torkizadeh
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The Three Musketeers Part 1: D'artagnan (French)
D'Artagnan arrives in Paris trying to find his attackers after being left for dead, which leads him to a real war where the future of France is at stake. He aligns himself with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, three musketeers of the King.
Director: Martin Bourboulon
Starring: Francois Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio Marmai, Eva Green
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Werckmeister Harmonies - Criterion Collection (Hungarian)
The mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus completed with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. In thirty-nine hypnotic long takes engraved in ghostly black and white, auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.
Director: Bela Tarr, Agnes Hranitzky
Starring: Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla
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Mercer County Library System
2751 Brunswick Pike Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 609-882-9246 https://mcl.org
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