Georgiana Halmac is turning 15 this winter, but she has no time for teenage dreams when her mother, who's on unemployment, moves to Torino to find work. Georgiana is left in charge of her six siblings in a social housing condo on the outskirts of Bacau, Romania. Caught between adolescence and the responsibilities of adulthood, Georgiana does the best she can, improvising with parenting advice from the television and the occasional phone call with her mother. As she handles her own issues and high-school dramas, Georgiana must also deal with admonishing neighbours who threaten to turn the whole family into social services. With incredible calm and stoicism, Georgiana amazes as she holds everything together in an ingenious and delicate balance.
2014-10-12
7.5
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.
Filmmaker Molly Gandour, in her mid-20s, returns to her childhood home in Indiana to speak with her parents in depth for the first time about her sister's death from cancer sixteen years earlier. The filmmaker comes of age as she weaves a deeply observed portrait of a family unearthing a long ago loss. Unflinching and poignant, Peanut Gallery shows us how we can transform when we begin to fill the silences between those closest to us.
This underwater ballet is an ecological story depicting our paradoxical relationship with plastic. Bakelite launched the #SickOfPlastic campaign from On Est Prêt, along with the Surfrider Foundation, Break Free from Plastic and the Resilient Foundation. Photography was directed by Jacques Ballard, a specialist in underwater cinematography.
Michael White might just be the most famous person you’ve never heard of. A notorious London theatre and film impresario, he produced over 300 shows and movies over the last 50 years. Bringing to the stage the risqué productions of Oh! Calcutta!, The Rocky Horror Show and to the screen Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, as well as introducing Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch and Yoko Ono to London audiences, he irrevocably shaped the cultural scene of the 1970s London. Playboy, gambler, bon vivant, friend of the rich and famous, he is now in his eighties and still enjoys partying like there’s no tomorrow. In this intimate documentary, filmmaker Gracie Otto introduces us to this larger-than-life phenomenon. Featuring interviews with 50 of his closest friends including Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, John Waters and Barry Humphries and, of course, the man himself, Otto pays a vibrant tribute to a fascinating entertainer.
‘You have no choice about being here, you’ll have no choice about when you leave’ proclaims a woman in Xiaolu Guo’s latest film, a documentary about the personal and physical journeys of the people of London’s East End. Herself an immigrant to the area, Guo’s sensitive character studies hint at an affinity with the push and pull of feelings of alienation, a theme she has previously explored as a filmmaker (She a Chinese, LFF 2009) and novelist (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers). This empathy is also apparent in her playful stylistic approach that layers Warhol-esque news reports, archival material and a soundtrack including Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fela Kuti, to comment on the human cost of capitalism. The resulting film is both a penetrating portrait of a frenetic place that feels deeply authentic, and a powerful piece of protest film.
When Marvin Hamlisch passed away in August 2012 the worlds of music, theatre and cinema lost a talent the likes of which we may never see again. Seemingly destined for greatness, Hamlisch was accepted into New York’s Juilliard School as a 6-year-old musical prodigy and rapidly developed into a phenomenon. With instantly classic hits ‘The Way We Were’ and ‘Nobody Does It Better’ and scores for Hollywood films such as The Swimmer, The Sting and Sophie’s Choice and the Broadway juggernaut A Chorus Line; Hamlisch became the go-to composer for film and Broadway producers and a prominent presence on the international Concert Hall circuit. His streak was staggering, vast, unprecedented and glorious, by the age of 31 Hamlisch had won 4 Grammys, an Emmy, 3 Oscars, a Tony and a Pulitzer prize: success that burned so bright, it proved impossible to match.
Russian avant-garde filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and German playwright Bertolt Brecht recount the brief portions of their lives they spent in Hollywood trying to make art that was both radical and popular.
An exploration of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's notes and drawings for a science fiction movie that he pitched to Paramount in 1930 about the residents of a skyscraper with walls and floors of clear glass.
The saga of a movie treatment written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht during his unhappy stint in Hollywood based on a Life Magazine article about a farm family who win a week's stay in a model home at the Ohio State Fair, with the catch that they will be on display to the public.
Set deep in the traditional territory of Tahltan First Nation, Northern British Columbia’s Red Chris gold and copper mine is the backdrop to a lyrical tapestry of landscapes and diverse personal stories from the land. Language preservation initiatives and mining opposition evoke emotional tones as the story swells with ravishing images of wilderness as a rough and untamed beauty. A thoughtful shift from Wild’s traditional narrative style of radical point of view documentary, "KONELĪNE" is a meditation on nature, culture, and economy as experienced by those who live and work on the land.
A true Canadian iconoclast, acclaimed transgender country/electro-pop artist Rae Spoon revisits the stretches of rural Alberta that once constituted “home” and confronts memories of growing up queer in an abusive, evangelical household.
In this documentary by Coline Serreau, known for her feature film Why Not?, a selection of Frenchwomen in characteristically no-win situations discuss what they are experiencing and answer, if only by implication, the question: "What do women want?"
"The Apology" explores the lives of former "comfort women," the more than 200,000 girls forced into sexual slavery during World War II. Today, they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.
Bartolomé, a teacher in a multigrade school on the mountains of Chiapas in Mexico, knows well that pedagogy is not based on textbooks and cannot fit behind the four walls of a classroom. A true sower of knowledge unravels his philosophy and method and becomes a beacon of hope for the creation of a humanistic model of education based on curiosity and love for the outside world.
The remarkable, forgotten story behind David Bowie’s biggest-ever hit record – and how an unlikely journey, deep into the Australian outback, led to its unprecedented success.
Each one of the 15 lighthouses around the island of Puerto Rico tells the story of the lighthouse keepers, wives or daughters that lived in them. Additional testimonies by architects, historians, biologists and fishermen take us on a trip of beauty, hope, perseverance around them, as we witness the magnificence of its structures and its magical surroundings. Some lighthouses are active, some have been restored, others have been abandoned but all have a unique story to tell.
Taşkafa is a real dog and also a legend on the streets of Istanbul. John Berger begins Taşkafa’s story, reading from his novel, King, the story of the disappearance of a community told from a dog’s perspective. The area’s ordinary people – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, street traders – care deeply about the welfare of the city’s street dogs and they tell us stories about Taşkafa and their other canine neighbours. The animals are a symbol of community living, where people (and dogs) look out for each other, but this is a community in transition; one from which dogs are starting to be expelled. Eccentric, amusing and very warm, the film is a powerful indictment of the impact of global politics and the economic appropriation of public space but, even more, it is a tribute to both the spirit of resistance and to city life that can accommodate people and dogs together.
British documentary filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s grandparents were aid workers in Palestine. Growing up, she had avoided getting too involved in the subject, recalling how mention of the country made all the adults in her life angry. In her forties, after revisiting her grandmother’s book on the subject, she starts to research a documentary on the effects of foreign aid in the area and is shocked at the continued reliance on it there. Along the way she meets Lubna, a Palestinian woman who acts as her driver and fixer, and who is fiercely critical of Western aid efforts in her country. What begins as a quest to better understand her family history turns into a deeply emotional account of two women trying to understand one another. Ruthven’s determination to focus her film on deeply subjective analysis results in a unique joining of the acutely personal and complexly political. (Source: LFF programme)
The unusual story of Nose and Tina, 2 people in love. He is employed as a brakeman, she as a sex worker.
A harried prehistoric bird mother entrusts her precious, soon-to-hatch egg to Sid. When she recommends him to her neighbours, business booms at his new egg-sitting service. However, dastardly pirate bunny, Squint, who is seeking revenge on the herd, steals, camouflages and hides all the eggs. Once again, with Squint’s twin brother assisting, Manny, Diego and the rest of the gang come to the rescue and take off on a daring mission that turns into the world’s first Easter egg hunt.
Ichiro Miki is a child living in the industrial district of Kawasaki, where his parents' constant struggle to make ends meet often leaves the schoolboy alone. Constantly teased by a bully nicknamed Gabara, his only friends are toy consultant Shinpei and fellow classmate Sachiko. Ichiro turns to escapist dreams of Monster Island where he befriends the equally bullied Minilla.
Tension mounts between a quadraplegic man and his wife as she prepares a bath for him.
Upon arriving at the Digital World after the "reboot", the Digidestined are hunted by a new villain. Meanwhile, Sora is troubled by her partner Digimon's indifference towards her.
Valeria's joy at becoming a first-time mother is quickly taken away when she's cursed by a sinister entity. As danger closes in, she's forced deeper into a chilling world of dark magic that threatens to consume her.
When a mysterious corpse is found in a river, a distressed police officer delves into a string of grisly murders as danger quickly approaches.
Tomek and Ania finally decide to get married. The wedding, according to the wishes of Ania, will take place at the family members of Tomek with whom he has had no contact for years. It turns out that his brothers and his mother are like an Italian family where every conversation threatens to lead to an explosion and where a loving relationship and a quarrel are close together. Also the mother of Ania does not make a good impression on the mother of Tomek when she appears at the wedding with a much younger partner. The unexpected arrival of Tomek's father, whom he has not seen for years, is the drop that makes the bucket overflow .
Three college freshmen befriend a gangster to get revenge on their seniors. After months of drinking and partying, their choices come back to bite them.
Through the course of several accidents and chance encounters, Hanoch and Ruben will meet and each of them will have to face a page of his personal history, a page that they both need to turn for good.
Spring is in the air and Puck and Einar, as well as Christer Wijk are invited to a wedding in Skoga. The day before the wedding, the bride-to-be enters a flower-shop in order to inspect her bridal bouquet of lily of the valley, but suddenly vanishes without at trace. When she eventually turns up again, it is Christer who finds her. She lies dead outside her home with a bouquet of lily of the valley in her hand. Everybody close to the bride are suspects, not least her best friend, whom Christer has just begun flirting with. Everybody seems to have something to hide. Question is: are their secrets connected to the murder?
The Driver now carries an arrogant rock star who is visiting a major city (not Pittsburgh as earlier believed). Played by Madonna, this title character wants to get away from her bodyguards in the Driver's BMW. He soon gets tired of her and decides to have a bit of fun.
A mentally-afflicted young man is accused of murdering his longtime benefactor. The real truth of what happened lies in his mad obsession with his supposed victim's old typewriter, on which he types relentlessly, day and night.
Assigned to deliver a prototype car to a press conference for the Governor, things are complicated by a fraudulent Bandit who ends up stealing Bandit's rig AND the prototype. Now Bandit has to find out who's out to ruin his life and recover the car before the Governor's career is crucified by Big Bob on his radio show and while avoiding a determined Sheriff Buford Enright.
The famous Italian football coach Oronzo Canà has retired to a villa in Apulia. Now, old and tired, he is enjoying a quiet life there, cultivating his vineyard, when suddenly he is summoned to Milan, in northern Italy. There the elderly chairman of a great Lombard ("Longobarda") club is suffering from dementia and has lost his powers of judgement, and the club's manager has been fired. He has decided to bring back Oronzo Canà as trainer, remembering him from his great football team of thirty years before, tasking him with bringing the club back to its old winning ways. Oronzo puts his trust in the intervention of a Russian billionaire who has bought the club for promotion. But it is a deception.
An accident in the butchers shop leads Norman Pitkin and Mr Grimsdale to the hospital where, after causing the normal ammount of chaos, Pitkin finds Lindy, a little girl who hasn't spoken or smiled since her parents were killed in an aeroplane accident. Pitkin decides to help.
Celebrities re-create an original episode each from "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons."
Having fought in the First Carlist War, Martin returns to his family farm in Gipuzkoa only to find that his younger brother, Joaquín, towers over him in height. Convinced that everyone will want to pay to see the tallest man on Earth, the siblings set out on a long trip all over Europe, during which ambition, money and fame will forever change the family’s fate. A story based on true events.