Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.
(segment "Irtebak")
Boy (segment "Anna")
Supporting
Self (segment "À 8 944 km de Cannes")
Self (segment "À 8 944 km de Cannes")
Ticket Man (segment "La Fonderie")
Two scientists are selected to travel across the universe to the source of a distant transmission and potential life.
It's night. Perhaps after a dream of an intruder crashing through a window, a woman who's sensitive to light has a telephone conversation with a friend. The woman has a plane ticket from Copenhagen to Buenos Aires at 6 that morning. She doesn't want to go. Her friend encourages her to make the trip. Later, she stands in a car park with her suitcase. Flying geese fill the screen.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Reports of the Pioneers: Excursion to the country, to the zoo etc.
Caught in the stranglehold of debt and structural adjustment, Africa is fighting for its survival. In the face of disaster, representatives of African society bring an action against international financial institutions. The trial takes place in Bamako, in the yard of a house, among its inhabitants.
Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.
A collection of deleted scenes from David Lynch's 2006 surrealist horror Inland Empire.
German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.
The film has three stories. First is about local village idiot Paletta, who can not afford the services of a whore and so steals a locket from a holy shrine belonging to local mafia don. Second shows the story of betrayal of Pitrinu (who's dead now) by his lover Fefe. Final episode is about lowlife Lazarus. He is killed by mob boss Toto, but raised from the dead by a local messiah, who is also known as Toto (and is played by same actor).
Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.
A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.
Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.
A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.
Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!
Maya is a happily married mother of two. She is a successful choreographer and everything seems to be perfect...but this life is a lie. Unbeknownst to her family and everyone around her, she has a hidden past.
Back on duty after alcohol withdrawal, Commissioner Bonì is investigating the case of a missing student. Eddie, a teenager, found a badly abused young woman in a barn. Now he's dead ...
In parallel stories, a social butterfly and a lower middle-class wife brace themselves for the challenge of birthing a child in the modern era.
A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.
Five directors tackle five short stories playfully tied together in one dark, twisted, humorous film about what goes on behind the door of room 316.
Series of tales. The framing story: a group of women are doing their laundry and begin to tell lusty tales.
A thirteen-year-old girl named Daisy, who suffers from terminal Epidermolysis Bullosa, meets Stinky, a British war veteran and drug addict. Like Peter Pan, Stinky is stuck in Neverland and like Wendy, Daisy inspires him to change his ways - helping him learn to appreciate life, find hope and find the kind of love that she knows she will never get to experience.
Set in the early part of 20th century Europe. There lived a dancer who becomes the romantic bone of contention between a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.
An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.
Reincarnated 30 years after being killed in a suspicious on-set fire, a small-time actor is determined to punish the person who ignited the blaze.
Set in the frozen steppes of Mongolia, a young nomad is confronted with his destiny after animals fall victim to a plague which threatens to eradicate nomadism.
Roberta is a bored suburban housewife who is fascinated with a woman, Susan, she only knows about by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of the newspaper. This fascination reaches a peak when an ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" proposes a rendezvous. Roberta goes too, and in a series of events involving amnesia and mistaken identity, steps into Susan's life.
A three-part love story: Alborada, Cénit y Ocaso (Sunrise, Noon and Sunset). A dying prince (Agüeros) lives a stormy love affair with a "femme fatale" (Padilla) who doesn't care for his feelings.
A movie director goes to the Paris Opera to shoot his new film. Lacking inspiration, he looks for ways out of his solitude and fear of failure. With each step forward, his imagination reveals itself to him, and mysterious characters lead him towards his desire to create and love.
A little girl is meeting her father who is back home for three days, but he is not giving her the attention she needs. When he starts talking to a woman, the girl finds his video camera and is soon recording the world around her.
The loss of youth, social and professional activity intensifies the sense of loneliness, the obsessions and the "dead end" in the life of an elderly couple.
Oscar is a small fish whose big aspirations often get him into trouble. Meanwhile, Lenny is a great white shark with a surprising secret that no sea creature would guess: He's a vegetarian. When a lie turns Oscar into an improbable hero and Lenny becomes an outcast, the two form an unlikely friendship.
The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.