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Foreign Films October 2020 |
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And Then We Danced (Georgian)
Merab, a young male dancer living in conservative Tbilisi, hopes for a spot in the National Georgian Ensemble, but his dreams are disrupted by the arrival of a new male dancer
Director: Levan Akin
Starring: Levan Gelbakhiani, Bachi Valishvili, Ana Javakishvili, Giorgi Tsereteli
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Asako I & II (Japanese)
A mysterious and intoxicating pop romance, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to the acclaimed Happy Hour begins with Asako, a young woman who meets and falls madly in love with a drifter, Baku, who one day abandons her. Two years later, Asako sees Baku again, or, rather, a young, solid businessperson named Ryohei who bears a striking resemblance to her old flame. They begin to build a happy life together until traces of Asako's past start to resurface. Forced English subtitles.
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Erika Karata, Masahiro Higashide
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Bacurau (Portuguese)
A few years from now, Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrives in town, picking off the inhabitants one by one.
Director: Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonca Filho
Starring: Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Thardelly Lima, Rubens Santos, Udo Kier, Sonia Braga, Antonio Saboia, Karine Teles
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Beanpole (Russian)
In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha, intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world.
Director: Kantemir Balagov
Starring: Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina
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By the Grace of God (French)
Francois Ozon's gripping drama follows three men who band together to dismantle the code of silence that continues to protect a priest who abused them decades ago. Based on events from the 2019 conviction of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon for concealing the conduct of Father Bernard Preynat, the film compassionately illustrates the varying effects of trauma on survivors and their families in an urgent portrait of resistance, the power of mobilization, and the mysteries of faith.
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Melvil Poupaud, Denis Menochet, Swann Arlaud, Eric Caravaca, Francois Marthouret, Bernard Verley, Josiane Balasko
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Come and See (Belarusian)
As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belarus, teenage Flyora eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty, rendered with feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design.
Director: Elm Klimov
Starring: Alexei Kravchenko
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The Cranes are Flying (Russian)
Veronica and Boris are blissfully in love, until the eruption of World War II tears them apart. Boris is sent to the front lines, and then communication stops.
Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
Starring: Alexei Batalov, Tatiana Samoilova
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The Cremator (Czech)
Karel Kopfrkingl works at a stately crematorium in Prague. Obsessed with his duties, he believes he is liberating the souls of the departed. With Nazi forces gathering at the Czech border, Karl descends into a mania that allows him to wholly enact his disturbed beliefs.
Director: Juraj Herz
Starring: Rudolf Hrusinsky, Vlasta Chramostova, Ilja Prachar, Jana Stehnova
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I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Romanian)
Chronicles a young theatre director's efforts to stage an accurate re-enactment of the Odessa Massacre, in which Romanian soldiers slaughtered tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews, despite the municipal government's attempt to censor the director's efforts. Her choice angers a city official who threatens to close the production because of its "anti-Romanian" take on history. However, the reaction to the staged play is one that neither anticipated.
Director: Radu Jude
Starring: Ioana Iacob, Alex Bogdan, Alexandru Dabija
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Ip Man 4: The Finale (Cantonese)
Ip Man’s life remains unchanged after his wife’s death, but he and his son are slowly drifting apart. To seek a better future for his son, Ip Man decides to travel to the U.S. only to find a stable, peaceful life abroad is only skin deep. Underneath lies deep-rooted racial discrimination that is far worse than he has expected. Ip Man re-examines his position and ponders on the reason he took up martial arts in the beginning.
Director: Wilson Yip
Starring: Donnie Yen, Wu Yue, Van Ness, Scott Adkins
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Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus (French)
A tale of doomed love between a lonely truck stop waitress and a gay, hunky garbage truck driver, whose boyfriend becomes increasingly jealous of the two. Sharing its title with Gainsbourg and Birkin’s sexually explicit 1969 hit pop song, the film is an equally provocative depiction of an unlikely couple’s torrid affair.
Director: Serge Gainsbourg
Starring: Jane Birkin, Joe Dallesandro, Hugues Quester, Rene Kolldehoff, Gerard Depardieu
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Jinpa (Tibetan)
On an isolated road passing through Tibet, a truck driver chances upon a young man who is hitching a ride. As they drive and chat, the truck driver notices that his new friend has a silver dagger strapped to his leg. He finds out that this man is out to kill someone who wronged him earlier in life. As he drops the hitchhiker off at a fork in the road, little does the truck driver realize that their short time together has changed everything and that their destinies are inexorably intertwined.
Director: Pema Tseden
Starring: Jinpa, Genden Phuntsok, Sonam Wangmo
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Lucky Grandma (Mandarin)
In the heart of Chinatown, New York, an ornery, chain-smoking, newly widowed 80-year-old grandma is eager to live life as an independent woman. When a local fortuneteller predicts a lucky day in her future, Grandma decides to head to the casino, only to land herself on the wrong side of luck, attracting the attention of some local gangsters. Desperate, Grandma employs the services of a bodyguard from a rival gang and soon finds herself right in the middle of a Chinatown gang war.
Director: Sasie Sealy
Starring: Tsai Chin, Hsiao-Yuan Ha, Michael Tow, Woody Fu
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire (French)
France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse's first moments of freedom. Héloïse's portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and a testament to their love.
Director: Celine Sciamma
Starring: Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bajrami, Valeria Golino, Christel Baras
Reviews
"I don't know that I've ever seen a film that works so well on both the emotional and intellectual levels." - Boston Globe
"A subtle and thrilling love story, at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of women's circumstances and almost utopian in its celebration of the freedom that is nonetheless available to them." - New York Times
"The film could be considered Exhibit A for essays on the female gaze." - Toronto Star
"It's a great example of how a well-told story, with vivid characters, can seep right into your bones and keep you thinking for days afterward-and the pleasure felt while watching it isn't negligible either." - Time Magazine
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Quai Des Orfevers (French)
Set in 1940s Paris, a singer, her piano-playing husband and their devoted confidante try to cover one another's tracks when a high-society acquaintance is murdered.
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Starring: Louis Jouvet, Suzy Delair, Bernard Blier, Simone Renant, Pierre Larquey
Reviews
"Witty and wise...**** Editor's Choice." - Video Librarian
"A gorgeous, extremely noir thriller...as atmospheric as they come." - New York Times
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The Specialists (Italian)
Notorious gunfighter Hud Dixon arrives in Blackstone, a town where his brother was wrongfully accused of robbing a bank and lynched for it. As Hud seeks revenge, he starts to discover the truth behind the stolen loot, and has to contend with an idealistic sheriff, a beautiful and seductive female banker, a corrupt businessman, and a one-armed Mexican bandit, who was once his friend.
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Starring: Johnny Hallyday, Gastone Moschin, Francoise Fabian, Angela Luce
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Teorema (Italian)
Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger, perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil, who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family, precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly in a procession of sacred and profane images, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle, blocked from an exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy, is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Laura Betti, Massimo Girotti, Silvana Mangano, Terence Stamp, Anne Wiazemsky
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The Whistlers (Romanian)
Not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery, and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off. In Romanian, English and Spanish with optional English subtitles, or English dubbed.
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Starring: Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Marlon, Rodica Lazar
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White, White Day (Icelandic)
In a remote Icelandic town, an off-duty police chief begins to suspect a local man of having had an affair with his late wife, who died in a tragic accident two years earlier. Gradually his obsession for finding out the truth takes over his life and inevitably begins to endanger himself and his loved ones.
Director: Hlynur Palmason
Starring: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir, Hilmir Snaer Gudnason
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The Wild Goose Lake (Chinese)
When small-time mob leader Zhou Zenong accidentally kills a cop, a dead-or-alive bounty is placed on his head, forcing him on the lam from both the police as well as dangerous gangsters out for the reward. Hiding out in China’s densely populated Wuhan province, Zhou becomes entangled with a beautiful, enigmatic owman, who has mysterious intentions of her own. Includes bonus short film: The Goddess.
Director: Diao Yinan
Starring: Hu Ge, Lun-Mei Kwei, Fan Liao, Wan Qian, Dao Qi, Jue Huang
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Zombi Child (French)
Haiti, 1962. A man is brought back from the dead only to be sent to the living hell of the sugarcane fields. In Paris, 55 years later, at a prestigious all-girls boarding school, Melissa, a young Haitian teenager, confesses an old family secret to a group of new friends, never imagining that this strange tale will convince a heartbroken classmate to do the unthinkable.
Director: Bertrand Bonello
Starring: Louise Labeque, Wislanda Louimat, Katiana Milfort, Mackenson Bijou
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Mercer County Library System 2751 Brunswick Pike Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 Phone: (609) 882-9246 E-mail: nrsupprt@mcl.org |
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