All Recommendations
I Am Love
Emma has left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.
The First, the Last
Apocalyptic neo-western about two gangsters, a town full of crazy people and Jesus...
Jonathan
A young man struggles with the pressure of caring for his terminally ill father while trying to unlock a secret that his father seems determined to keep from him. The story takes another dramatic turn when Ron, Burghardt’s long-lost friend from his youth, re-appears — and a well-kept family secret is uncovered.
Women Without Men
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.
Bog of Beasts
A man falls in love with a teenage girl, who is exploited by her own grandfather, who sometimes takes her to a gas station to show her naked to whomever pays him some money.
Julia
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
My Class
The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)
Ashes
In collaboration with Lomo, an Austrian camera company, and Mubi, a global film website, Weerasethakul was invited to make a work to launch the new LomoKino, a portable motion picture camera. Ashes juxtaposes the intimacy of his daily routine with the destruction of memories and his observations of the dark side of Thailand’s social realities.
Rude Boy
Rude Boy is a semi-documentary, part character study, part 'rockumentary', featuring a British punk band, The Clash. The script includes the story of a fictional fan juxtposed with actual public events of the day, including political demonstrations and Clash concerts.
Venice: Infinitely Avant-Garde
1600 years after its legendary foundation, Venice continues to be unique: the urban environment, made of stone, earth, and water, and for its legendary history. But, above all, Venice is unique for its identity as a city of oxymorons, holding together opposing DNA in a formidable contradiction: the allure of decadence, and the frenzy of the avant-garde. VENEZIA-INFINITA AVANGUARDIA is a labyrinth of stories, works of art, palaces, celebrities of social and cultural life, places, extravagances, and traditions. It's a sensory experience made of lights, water, and music. Beside connections and suggestions, testaments flow by of art historians, urbanists, sociologists, philosophers, curators, musicians, writers, journalists, artists, and our contemporaries.
Lane 1974
At 13 years old and the eldest of three kids, Lane struggles to keep her family together as her iconoclast mother moves without warning through the communes and dusty back woods of Northern California.
Neighborhooders
Ogrodowa Street in Lódz - just opposite a crowded shopping center, a state-of-the-art museum and a posh hotel - is where some of the city's poorest live, completely forgotten by the world. A heart-warming and funny portrait of people excluded from the mainstream of social life; people who might be more capable of sacrifice and love than those who pushed them to the sidelines of society.
All We Had
A mother struggles to make a better life for her daughter.
Tape
Jon, a first-time filmmaker, finds himself in Lansing, Michigan to present his film at a local film festival. Vince, his high school friend who is now a volunteer fireman and small-time drug dealer, also visits the town to support Jon on his big day, or so it seems. After a raucous hello and much backslapping, it appears that there is an undercurrent of tension in the air.
Manglehorn
AJ Manglehorn is an aging, ordinary guy in a small town. He nurses his sick cat, squeezes out a conversation with the local bank teller every Friday, and eats at the same place every day. But there is more to Manglehorn than meets the eye: he’s an ex-con who, 40 years ago, gave up the woman of his dreams for a big ‘job’. After a dramatic effort to start over, Manglehorn faces a terrifying moment and is unmasked as a guy with a very, very dark past.
The Ideal
Octave Parango, the former concept creator/editor of 99 francs has become a model scout in Moscow. This cynical hedonist leads a very pleasant life in the arms of young Russian models and in the private jets of his oligarch friends... until the day that he is contacted by The Ideal, the world's leading cosmetic's firm, embroiled in a huge media scandal. Our antihero has seven days to find a new muse by traveling through the confines of post-Communist Russia, under the orders of Valentine Winfield, a hard and authoritarian visual director.
My Golden Days
Paul is preparing to leave Tajikistan, while thinking back on his adolescent years. His childhood, his mother's madness, the parties, the trip to the USSR where he lost his virginity, the friend who betrayed him and the love of his life.
Barefoot
A hedonistic bachelor - he is his rich family's black sheep - falls for a suicidal mental patient.
The Greasy Strangler
Ronnie runs a Disco walking tour with his son, Brayden. When a sexy woman takes the tour, it begins a competition between father and son for her love. It also signals the arrival of an oily strangler who stalks the streets at night.
Toro
Toro (Spanish for "Bull") is a young con man and the right hand of Romano, a powerful mob boss in Torremolinos, Málaga (Andalusia, south to Spain). After Toro decides to leave Romano to get a life free of crime, his last sting fails, resulting one of his brothers dead and he sent to jail. Five years later, Romano realizes that López, Toro's older brother, is robbing him money from his tourism business and he orders to kidnap Diana, López's little daughter, until this one get back the money. Without options, López visits Toro, now a touristic driver with the third grade prison close to get the parole, who only wants to be free to marry his girlfriend Estrella. When Toro accepts to help López and both meet Romano looking for a solution, Toro ends attacking Romano's men and fleeing with Diana, trying to escape from Romano's revenge. But Romano starts a ruthless searching for they three, meanwhile Toro counts the hours to back the prison according to the third grade...