Without a doubt, the most eagerly anticipated of these films is Michael Haneke’s 2012 Palme d’Or winner, LOVE (Amour). With Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert starring in the leads, the film tells the poignant story of an elderly couple after many blissful years of married life.
LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE, the latest offering from veteran Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and his second to be made away from home shores, is set to premiere in Turkey at the Golden Boll. Shot in Japan, the film is built around the love triangle between a young student escort, her boyfriend and a much older client and revisits familiar Kiarostami themes such as social roles and values.
When a young woman leaves the city for a break at a cabin in the lush Austrian mountains, she finds herself trapped between invisible walls in the wild landscape and completely alone. Directed by Julian Roman Pölsler, THE WALL is a screen adaptation of the eponymous best-selling psychological thriller by Marlen Haushofer.
If you heard someone screaming with pain, what would you do? The question may be as old as mankind, but it’s given an original interpretation in 38 WITNESSES by avant-garde Belgian director Lucas Belvaux, who was inspired by a real-life incident that took place in the USA in 1964. When the residents of a middle-class neighbourhood in Le Havre hear screams one night, will they rush out to help or at the very least call the police?
Rufus Norris’s BROKEN, the opening film of the Critics’ Week at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a reflection on how violence changes people’s lives when relations break down between the residents of a North London neighbourhood.
Screened at Sundance, THE END OF LOVE tells the story of a young man who suddenly finds himself having to be both a mother and a father to his two-year-old son after the untimely death of his wife. The film’s director, Mark Webber, comes from an acting background and wrote the script based loosely on his own life. He stars in the film alongside his toddler son.
Lina and Miguel are an impoverished middle-aged couple who make a living as garbage collectors; they live in a slum settlement right next to the garbage dump. Despite her advancing years, Lina longs to have a child of her own. Her prayers are answered and she finds out one day that she’s pregnant. After she gives birth, however, the story takes a surreal twist. Screened at the Toronto Film Festival, FABLE OF THE FISH is a Philippine production directed by Adolfo Borinaga Alix, Jr.
Dutch director Boudewijn Koole’s KAUWBOY, which won Best First Feature award at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, tells the story of 10-year-old Jojo who lives with his father. Jojo finds an abandoned baby jackdaw and smuggles it home to look after even if he knows that his father will object. But when the truth comes out he runs away from home.
Twenty people are killed when a bomb explodes at the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris a day before the presidential elections. While the government points the finger at Islamic groups, a computer hacker finds as series images which suggest an altogether different scenario. Directed by Cedric Jimenez, PARIS UNDER WATCH uses security camera footage to show that the truth can have many faces.
Finland was the only country in World War II to repatriate the bodies of troops killed at the front. The Sakari Kirjavainen directed film SILENCE looks at war from a very different perspective. In 1944, at an assembly centre near the Finnish-Russian front where the war dead are collected to be sent back home, the staff are witness to the bodies talking in whispers.
Based on a true story, Nic Balthazar’s TIME OF MY LIFE loosely follows the chain of events that led up to the legalization of euthanasia in Belgium. When Mario, one of four long-time friends, is suddenly diagnosed with MS, the lives of all four are thrown upside down. As a successful politician in the making, Mario begins a battle to decriminalize euthanasia in his homeland.
Directed by Andrés Wood, VIOLETA WENT TO HEAVEN reflects on the life of Violeta Parra, the Chilean singer and lyricist recognized as the mother of Latin American folk music. Parra’s extraordinary story sees her evolve from an impoverished child into an international pop culture icon and from there to Chile’s national hero. The film was Chile’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2012.
Greek director Angelos Abazoglou’s documentary MUSTAFA’S SWEET DREAMS takes up the story of Mustafa, an apprentice baklava maker in the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep. When he leaves his job against the advice of family and friends, we follow him to Istanbul to chase his dreams in the metropolis.
Eleven-year-old Davut, whose father is the imam of the local Brooklyn mosque, inadvertently befriends a young Jewish boy, Yoav. Yoav and his family take Davut for a Jew and know him as David. The genuine friendship that grows between the boys, who both come from devout families, is a lesson in tolerance and open-mindedness. DAVID, which won the Ecumenical Prize at the Montreal Film Festival, is Joel Fendelman’s debut feature.
The winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival was the Taviani brothers’ CAESAR MUST DIE. The Italian octogenarians, Vittorio and Paolo, were also the most enthusiastic filmmakers of the festival. The film, a blend of narrative and documentary, shows real-life inmates at an Italian high-security prison staging a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but also covers the prisoners’ experiences ‘behind the scenes’.
