The people at the centre of this film are lawyers, civil servants, housewives, managing directors and mothers. They are also alcoholics. In her documentary, Carolin Schmitz explores the protagonists’ stories and their strategies for survival: the little tricks they employ in order to try and get through their daily lives – lives which become increasingly difficult to manage the stronger the addiction becomes. Their fear of losing control and being exposed as a drinker create their need to conform, but the protagonists can only cope with this pressure by increasing their alcohol intake.
2011-07-27
4
0.0Metro trains disappear on the turning track, only to immediately return on the same route. Tapio (57), Toni (42) and Aksa (60) are also stuck on these tracks. The men meet every morning in the square behind the Herttoniemi metro station, from where they transfer to Vuosaari in the metro's "restaurant car". Men's lives are dominated by alcohol and unemployment. The turning track of dreams follows the lives of Tapio, Toni and Aksa for a year - moments filled with joy, despair, self-destruction and friendship in the metro stations and trains of Eastern Helsinki. It gives voice to those who do not have special human dignity in the eyes of society.
7.4Paris, Rue Beautreillis, July 3, 1971. The corpse of rock star Jim Morrison is found in a bathtub, in the apartment of his girlfriend Pamela Courson. The chronicle of the last months of the life of the poet, singer and charismatic leader of the American band The Doors, one of the most influential in the history of rock.
7.0A tender portrayal of four stubborn brothers becomes a touching contemporary Swedish family chronicle about dreams, class, heritage, and the difficulty of connection. The Andersson brothers grew up in a working-class home in Gothenburg. Roy became an internationally acclaimed filmmaker while Ronny ended up as a homeless man. Kjell became a documentary filmmaker, and Leif lives as a disability pensioner.
5.0A personal film by Steffan Strandberg about his adolescence with an alcoholic mother.
0.0Markenhof nursing home is located in the woods of Beekbergen. The unsuspecting walker might think it's a holiday park, but the buildings are home to 138 patients, all wandering around in various stages of memory-destroying Korsakoff's Syndrome. Korsakov's disease is caused by severe vitamin B1 deficiency, almost always the result of alcoholism. One patient can do little more than stare into space, while the other appears to be fine at first glance. Wracked by guilt, shame, addiction and a destroyed memory, patients Kenny and Christina try to create an understandable and livable world.
Bold & candid, One Little Pill will reveal to the world a startling pharmaceutical discovery & assault the skepticism & denial perpetuating alcohol dependence.
7.0A newspaper clip of a 30-year-old movie makes our middle-aged protagonist in the middle of his peak years to look for his best childhood friend. The journey leads him back to his teenage years in the 1990s depression, over-generational substance abuse and past encounters. This partly essayistic, autobiographical documentary tells the story of friendship and generational experiences while also pondering on the causes and effects of destinies in the judgmental atmosphere of our society.
7.1Chronicles the fascinating and often turbulent life of Townes Van Zandt.
6.3Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behavior. In Morley’s search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.
0.0Alcoholics Anonymous is a community of men and women who share their experience, hope and support with each other so that they can address their common problem and help others to break free from alcohol addiction. The documentary follows the stories of ten people who have been on the verge of alcoholism for almost their entire lives.
0.0The degenerate alcoholics, the men and women of the beaches, themselves speak openly about their lives and problems. Through their stories, a picture emerges of those on the periphery of society who succumbed to alcohol because of war or difficult living conditions. They are aware of their own State; reason is still there, but the Will is lacking. The film is a cry for help on behalf of humans, it is a dispassionate and honest description of the position of degenerate alcoholics in Finnish society in the early 1970s.
0.0Arthur and Ernest are two bachelor fishermen who occupy the proverbial end-of-the-road on Morris Island, an Acadian community in southern Nova Scotia. Sober or not, they carry on with and for the filmmaker who is attempting to find out about their lives. The resulting encounters owe a smuch to Harold Pinter or Samuel beckett is they do to the documentary genre of film-making.
7.1The life and work of the enigmatic singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson.
0.0In 1986, twelve years after his film Kihnu Naine (The women of Kishnou), Mark Soosaar made this complementary documentary at the centre of which are the male inhabitants of the island. With a bitter undertone to it, Soosaar shows how, to this view, a lack of possibilities for self-government and the conceited attitude of the mainland towards the islanders have caused great problems to this society. The island has been negligently placed under far too large a kolkhoz. Enormous alcoholism is prevalent among the male population and, increasingly, among the women. Sheer possession of money has become a standard of regard. If a family cannot spare 4,000 roubles for the marriage of their children, they are ignored by the other islanders. In this dramatic as well as poetic documentary we see how the social awareness of a society has gone by the board. Merely concrete and strict reformations can improve the situation the island is in.
10.0Adrian Chiles takes a long hard look at his own love of boozing. He wants to find out why he and many others don't think they are addicted to alcohol, despite finding it almost impossible to enjoy life without it.
6.0In Dependence is a documentary film about a middle aged couple trying to balance their lives in the riptide of alcoholism and co-dependency.
7.2A Royal Hangover is a feature length documentary about the ambivalent alcohol culture of Britain. Think Bowling For Columbine, only with alcohol instead of guns. Drinking for Britain: We don't shoot ourselves to death here, we kill ourselves with drink - much more dignified!
David Vandenbrink seems like a healthy 21-year-old, bright and articulate young man. There is little to suggest that while in his mother's womb, he suffered permanent brain damage. His condition, fetal alcohol syndrome (F.A.S.), went undiagnosed for the first 18 years of his life, causing confusion, anger, and pain for both David and his non-Indigenous adoptive family. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a term used to describe a set of symptoms seen in some children born to women who drank alcohol during pregnancy. The damage can be subtle or severe, resulting in a wide range of symptoms in the areas of slowed growth, disfigurement, and damage to the brain. Associated behavioural problems include impulsiveness, poor judgment, and an inability to grasp the consequences of actions. This personal story, using video footage shot by David himself, along with the experiences of members of his family, is a hard look into the serious consequences of a little-known, but widespread, health problem.
6.3A feature length, theatrical documentary on the life of Paul Gascoigne, one of the greatest footballers that ever lived: delving deep into his psyche, vulnerabilities, fears and triumphs.
6.4This time the "amici" (friends) are just four: Necchi, Meandri, Mascetti and Sassaroli. Nevertheless they are older they still love to spend their time mainly organizing irresistible jokes to everyone in every kind of situation. Mascetti is hospitalized in a geriatric clinic. Of course the place become immediately the main stage for all their jokes. After some jokes they decided to place an ultimate incredible and farcical joke to the clinic guests.
6.3When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.
8.5A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
7.4Superman, a journalist in Metropolis, embarks on a journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent.
7.6The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
5.6North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.
7.6An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order.
7.4In the midst of trying to legitimize his business dealings in 1979 New York and Italy, aging mafia don, Michael Corleone seeks forgiveness for his sins while taking a young protege under his wing.
6.1The sole survivor of an interplanetary rescue mission lands on the planet of the apes, and uncovers a horrible secret beneath the surface.
7.5Gromit’s concern that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions proves justified, when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own. When it emerges that a vengeful figure from the past might be masterminding things, it falls to Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master… or Wallace may never be able to invent again!
6.0Five years after a zombie outbreak, the men and women of R-Division hunt down and destroy the undead. When they see signs of a second outbreak, they fear humanity may not survive.
5.9The story of an ancient war that is reignited when a young farmhand unwittingly opens a gateway between our world and a fearsome race of giants. Unleashed on the Earth for the first time in centuries, the giants strive to reclaim the land they once lost, forcing the young man, Jack into the battle of his life to stop them. Fighting for a kingdom, its people, and the love of a brave princess, he comes face to face with the unstoppable warriors he thought only existed in legend–and gets the chance to become a legend himself.
7.5The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.
6.4Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, covert operations expert Zora Bennett is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world's three most massive dinosaurs. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that's been hidden from the world for decades.
7.1An ethical Baltimore defense lawyer disgusted with rampant legal corruption is forced to defend a judge he despises in a rape trial under the threat of being disbarred.
5.5Alex Corvis, a man wrongly executed for the murder of his girlfriend, returns from the dead and sets out to find the real killer.
6.2Two hundred years after Lt. Ripley died, a group of scientists clone her, hoping to breed the ultimate weapon. But the new Ripley is full of surprises … as are the new aliens. Ripley must team with a band of smugglers to keep the creatures from reaching Earth.
6.4Seventeen-year-old Vera earns money by secretly renting out an apartment to teenagers seeking privacy, all while eavesdropping from behind a closed door. As she listens, her own desires awaken.
8.4An idiosyncratic FBI agent investigates the murder of a young woman in the even more idiosyncratic town of Twin Peaks. (This standalone version of the series pilot was produced for the European VHS market and has an alternate, closed ending.)
6.1Venerable newscaster Norm Archer reports the latest news in politics, health, culture and entertainment - such as an automotive recall of decapitation-inducing "Neckbelts" and a study finding that "depression hits losers hardest". This compilation of bogus news stories, celebrity profiles, movie trailers and skits come courtesy of the ace satirists at The Onion.