|
|
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Germany, 2008, 150 min.
This frantically paced epic traces the rise and fall of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction, a group of radicals who wrought mayhem on postwar Germany over the course of nearly three decades.... more
|
|
|
|
Bedford: The Town They Left Behind
USA, 2009, 75 min.
During WWII, Bedford, Virginia was a town of a few thousand residents, 19 of whom lost their lives in the D-Day invasion — a higher proportion than any other place in the US. This film examines the lives of those who died and those who survived, as well as Bedford's role in current conflicts.... more
|
|
|
|
Before Tomorrow
Canada, 2008, 93 min.
Inuit elder Ningiuq (Madeline Ivalu) and her grandson Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu) fear they are the last people on earth after a mysterious illness kills their clan. This is the debut feature from the Inuit women's group Arnalt Video Collective.... more
|
|
|
|
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
USA, 2008, 86 min.
Joan Allen narrates this powerful film about the remarkable life of Hannah Senesh — a 23-year-old Hungarian writer living in Palestine in 1944, who volunteered for a doomed mission to try to rescue Jews in Budapest. Revelatory archival footage and moving interviews combine to great effect.... more
|
|
|
|
The Blind Sunflowers
Spain, 2008, 98 min.
The Spanish Civil War continues to haunt Spanish culture. Blind Sunflowers looks at the effect of the war on the children growing up under the Franco regime when a young boy can't quite figure out why his father lives secretly in his own house.... more
|
|
|
|
Crossing
South Korea, 2008, 106 min.
Focused on the politically sensitive issue of North Korean defectors, Crossing tells the heartrending story of a young family struggling with abject poverty. Their situation becomes so dire that the devoted father takes a chance and slips across the border.... more
|
|
|
|
Everlasting Moments
Sweden, 2008, 125 min.
Veteran Swedish director Jan Troell (best known for The Emigrants, his classic from 1971) returns with this elegant, perfectly realized period family drama starring the luminous Maria Heiskanen as Maria Larsson, a pioneer of Swedish photography at the turn of the 20th century.... more
|
|
|
|
Female Agents
France, 2008, 121 min.
A high-octane French action film with an all-star international cast, Female Agents is the fictionalized account of Resistance heroines who save the day for the Allies in World War II by rescuing a British geologist from occupied France before the Gestapo can force him to reveal plans.... more
|
|
|
|
Forgotten Transports: To Estonia
Czech Republic, 2008, 85 min.
Bearing witness to some little-told stories of the Holocaust, this moving documentary offers an important contribution to WWII history as it traces the harrowing three-year odyssey of roughly 100 young Czech Jewish women after they arrived in Estonia on September 5, 1942.... more
|
|
|
|
Goodbye Mothers
Morocco, 2007, 110 min.
Set in 1960s Morocco as the Jewish population surreptitiously immigrates to Israel in search of a better life. The sawmill owned by Brahim, a Muslim, and Henry, his Jewish business partner, is failing. Henry decides to try his luck in Israel.... more
|
|
|
|
The Green Dumpster Mystery
Israel, 2008, 50 min.
Like Daniel Mendelsohn's nonfiction bestseller The Lost, this tightly paced tour de force of detection vividly evokes the now-extinguished lives of an extended family seared by the Holocaust and modern Israeli tragedies.... more
|
|
|
|
Hunger
United Kingdom, 2008, 96 min.
In 1981 Bobby Sands, an Irish Republican, starved himself to death as a protest against the British government. Visual artist Steve McQueen's stunning directorial debut unrelentingly depicts the last months of Sands' life in Belfast's Maze prison.... more
|
|
|
|
Il Divo
Italy, 2008, 110 min.
Director Paolo Sorrentino's portrait of seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti (a brilliant Toni Servillo) is packed with wicked wit, brilliant cinematography and drama galore. Andreotti dominated Italian politics until undone by scandal and the predations of the Mafia.... more
|
|
|
|
The Jester
Poland, 1937, 90 min.
Set in a Galician shtetl before World War II, this famous Yiddish-language musical comedy is rich with itinerant performers and star-crossed lovers. Shown in a beautiful tinted and toned newly restored print.... more
|
|
|
|
Last Stop 174
Brazil, 2008, 110 min.
Last Stop 174 follows the intertwined paths of two boys, Sandro and Alessandro, who meet in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, bond in prison, and begin a life of crime together that eventually leads to the famous hijacking of a bus in 2000.... more
|
|
|
|
Love One Another
Germany, 1922, 96 min.
A young Jewish woman moves to St. Petersburg, falls in love with a revolutionary, flees the police and returns to her village just as a pogrom breaks out in this grand protest against anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia.... more
|
|
|
|
The Necessities of Life
Canada, 2008, 103 min.
In the 1950s, Tivii, an Inuit hunter and family man from Baffin Island, is yanked from his isolated home terrain and installed in a Quebec City tuberculosis sanitarium. There he takes a fatherly interest in an afflicted native orphan.... more
|
|
|
|
No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos
USA, 2008, 97 min.
No Subtitles Necessary traces the lives and careers of legendary cinematographers Laszlo Kovaks and Vilmos Zsigmond using archival footage and interviews with a mix of iconic "New Hollywood" and contemporary movie figures including Peter Fonda, Sharon Stone, John Voight, Barbara Streisand, Pe... more
|
|
|
|
The Rest Is Silence
Romania, 2007, 140 min.
A fictionalized account of the making of Romania's first feature film, the 1912 epic The War of Independence, itself a lavish recreation of Romania's struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877.... more
|
|
|
|
The Sea Wall
France, 2008, 115 min.
A faithful adaptation of French literary lion Marguerite Duras' semi-autobiographical novel about her impoverished adolescence, dysfunctional family and affair with a Chinese man, The Sea Wall offers a mix of Cambodia's natural beauty, period politics, and powerful acting.... more
|
|
|
|
Walt & El Grupo
USA, 2008, 106 min.
In 1941, the US government sent Walt Disney and his creative team to South America on a goodwill tour that culminated in Latin American-themed Disney films. Using archival footage and personal testimony, the film reveals a legendary artist at an extraordinary time.... more
|
|