Slow Cinema

Amongst the pythonic mountains of landlocked Lesotho, an 80 year old widow winds up her earthly affairs, makes arrangements for her burial and prepares to die. But when her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to the construction of a reservoir, she finds a new will to live and ignites a collective spirit of defiance within her community. In the final dramatic moments of her life, Mantoa’s legend is forged and made eternal.

Shadows in Paradise established Kaurismäki’s international reputation, and was voted one of the best films of the decade in a major critics’ poll. Fassbinder’s influence, particularly that of The Merchant of Four Seasons, is amply evident in this melancholy comedy about a garbage truck driver (Matti Pellonpää) — “Bad teeth, bad stomach, liver hanging on. That’s more than I can say for my head,” as he resignedly sums himself up — who falls in love with a supermarket cashier (played by Kaurismäki’s ur-actress, Kati Outinen). Weary of the world and wary of each other, the downtrodden lovers run away after she revenges herself upon her employer, their erratic affair played out in bingo parlours and cramped hotels with a backbeat of ’50s rockabilly and tango. Kaurismäki’s sympathy for the articulate and the wounded, combined with a striking visual sense, makes for an exhilarating experience.

Three people live in a remote Buddhist monastery near Mount Chonan: Hyegok, the old master; Yong Nan, a young man who has left his extended family in the city to seek enlightenment, and an orphan lad Haejin, whom Hyegok has brought to the monastery to raise as a monk. The story is mostly Yong Nan's, told in flashbacks: how he came to the monastery, his brief return to the city, his vacillation between the turbulence of the world and his hope to overcome passions and escape the idea of self. We also see Hyegok as a teacher, a protector, and a father figure, and we watch Haejin make his way as a curious and nearly self-sufficient child.

Paterson is a bus driver in the city whose name her shares: Paterson, New Jersey. Every day, he drives his route and observes the city as it drifts across his windshield. During his lunch break, he writes poetry into a notebook. In contrast to Paterson's steady routine, his wife Laura's world is constantly changing. New dreams come to her almost daily, each a different and inspired project.

Money and love worries of swimming teacher Aldo and rum factory worker Monica in Melaza, the cradle of Cuban sugarcane. With tangible love for Cuba, the director takes a fresh look at his struggling characters: you can also learn to swim in a piscina without water. In the Cuban village of Melaza, named after the once flourishing sugarcane fields, time stands still. Even when all kinds of things happen, nothing ever changes. The State pretends to take care of everything, but it shuts the rum factory and makes swimming lessons impossible. There's no use complaining, think the inhabitants, that’s just how it is. Melaza is the heartwarming love story of Aldo and Monica, a photogenic couple who live in a much too small cottage with their fat daughter and grumpy grandma. They try very hard to earn some extra money. Their attempts finally get the couple into deeper and deeper trouble. But together, the lovers manage to pull through it. New talent Carlos Lechuga tells his critical story with humour and sparse dialogue, taking us on a journey to the beauties of rural Cuba. Far from the hotels and from Havana, but with a reality familiar to everyone who has ever been to Cuba - or faced a shortage of cash. (Filmfestival Rotterdam)

Nanook and Sedna are the last members of their ethnic group and live in a yurt on the snow-covered fields in the far north. Spring arrives earlier than usual, ice fishing is less productive than it used to be and airplanes make their way in the sky. Sedna also notices that Nanook is beginning to forget things. In beautiful pictures Milko Lazarov tells this calm story in gentle reference to the great pioneer of the documentary film Robert J. Flaherty with his Nanook of the North.

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave -- the birthplace of his first life... From the director of SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY, TROPICAL MALADY and BLISSFULLY YOURS.

Life in a small town is akin to journeying in the middle of the steppes: the sense that "something new and different" will spring up behind every hill, but always unerringly similar, tapering, vanishing or lingering monotonous roads...

The film is a study of the 20th century cult of personality - the myth, the lure and the corruption of the political hero who is a fusion of two characters. Drawing from the so-called Dilessi incident of 1870 (updated in the film to the dawn of the twentieth century), this Megalexandros is a bandit of the sort that typically plagued nineteenth century Greece. Wrapped in the spiritual cloak of yet another Megalexandros - a legendary Greek liberator and King Arthur-like figure whose tale originated in 1453 under Turkish domination and has come down through oral tradition over the centuries - he becomes a leader of mysterious charisma. He kidnaps a group of English aristocrats and takes them to a mountain village where he is attempting to establish an agrarian commune among a company of Italian anarchists. The socialist hero becomes a Stalin-like tyrant whose trademark silence only reinforces his power. The film is a true work of demythification - from the roots of myth to the false promises of the new century.

An ageing father waits, in vain, at the bus stop for his son Raghu, a student at the University of Trivandrum, who is supposed to be coming home for the holidays. The elderly Chakyar’s eager happiness slowly turns to disappointment and then anxiety. After several days with no news of Raghu, his family learn that the police have arrested him for singing revolutionary songs at the university’s annual fête. Chakyar goes to the capital, hoping to find support from the Minister of Internal Affairs, and is soon joined by his daughter, who does not, however, share his optimism. When it becomes clear that Raghu cannot escape a jail sentence, the old man gradually loses his reason … In Piravi, Shaji N. Karun denounces not only the corruption that exists within the establishment, but also focuses on the impotence of the individual in the face of an oppressive system. By keeping Raghu off-screen, the director conveys a sense of absence and uncertainty with a rare intensity.

Academy Award 2022: Best Foreign Language Film. - Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanja at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.

Two introverted people find out by pure chance that they share the same dream every night. They are puzzled, incredulous, a bit frightened. As they hesitantly accept this strange coincidence, they try to recreate in broad daylight what happens in their dream.

Yumiko is a young woman from Osako, whose life is defined by the death of her loved ones. She lost her grandmother at the age of twelve, and her husband Ikuo, who is the reincarnation of her grandmother to her, commits suicide some months after the birth of their child. Once more Yumiko loses a person she had really loved. Five years later she marries Tamio, a man who lives by the sea together with his eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Her pain has ceased until the day she returns to her place of birth and gets caught up by her memories.

Nuria, 12, Fabio, 9, and their mother Amparo arrive in a small island in the middle of Amazonia, at the border of Brazil, Colombia and Peru. They ran away from the Colombian armed conflict in which their father disappeared. One day, he reappears in their new house. The family is haunted by this strange secret and discovers the island is peopled with ghosts.

The Hirayamas travel from their hometown of Onomichi to Tokyo to visit their adult children. But the younger generation make them feel more in the way than welcome. It also emerges that their son’s career as a doctor and their daughter’s as a hairdresser are nowhere near as successful as the couple were led to believe from afar. The only one who really makes an effort to spend time with them is their daughter-in-law, Noriko, the widow of the Hirayama’s son who went missing in the war. On the journey home, mother Hirayama is taken seriously ill and the couple have to make an unscheduled stop in Osaka, where another of their adult children lives. In a succinct, objective and non-judgemental manner, Yasujirō Ozu uses images which are as simple as they are magnificent to tell the story of family estrangement and the isolation inherent in modern society. Ozu himself considered Tōky ō Monogatari his "masterpiece" and the 1963 Retrospective of the Berlin International Film Festival, the "film-historical screenings", was dedicated to him. This is the international premiere of the digitally restored version made by Japanese production company Shochiku.

A group of students decides to camp on a desolate Caspian region which runs a competition of kite flying during the winter solstice. Not far from the camp, live Babak and Saeed, two grim cooks. Armed with sharp knives, they roam the forest in search of meat to serve the decrepit restaurant they run nearby. The second feature film by Shahram Mokri (premiered in Venice), "Fish & Cat" is inspired by the true story of a restaurant that served human flesh and its aesthetic proposal is a tour de force: a film shot in a single take (by the director of photography, Mahmoud Kalari), combining formal experimentation and suspense horror film with a sense of humor that is rare in Iranian cinema.

In an undetermined country where desolation reigns, the Zone is a mysterious and dangerous region, where only the Stalkers, smugglers, dare to venture. One of them tries to take a writer and a scientist inside this Zone, to a room where their dearest desires can be fulfilled... After Solaris, Andreï Tarkovski returns to science fiction to illustrate a world that no longer has faith in anything. He signs a timeless masterpiece with inexhaustible potential.

Told through captivating imagery and visuals this long-awaited movie from a renowned Georgian filmmaker is an unusual psychological drama that demonstrates just how unnecessary dialogue can be for creating maximum audience effect. An old peasant and his innocent 16-year-old granddaughter sow corn on an island in the middle of the Inguri River dividing Georgia from Abkhazia. The intense bond between nature and the two individuals is disturbed, however, by the arrival of the border police.

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman leaves his native Palestine in search of a new homeland – only to find that Palestine is with him wherever he goes. The quest for a new life quickly becomes a comedy of errors: whether in Paris or in New York, something always reminds him of home. All the while, Suleiman keeps returning to the same nagging question: What kind of place could we ever truly call home?

Timbuktu is silent, the doors closed, the streets empty. No more music, no tea, no cigarettes, no bright colors, no laughs. The women have become shadows. The religious fundamentalists are spreading terror in the region. In the dunes, away from the chaos, Kidane enjoys a quiet life with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya and Issan, his little shepherd. But his peace is short-lived. After accidentally killing Amadou, a fisherman who stroke down his favorite cow, Kidane must face the law of the new foreign rulers determined to defeat an open and tolerant Islam. Against the humiliations and acts of brutality performed by these complex men, Timbuktu tells the story of the silent struggle of the people, the fight for life of little Issan, and the uncertain future of the children.

Sam and Jonathan, a pair of hapless novelty salesman, take us on a kaleidoscopic tour of the human condition in reality and fantasy, unfolding in absurdist episodes: a sing-along at a 1940s beer hall, a randy flamenco teacher, a thirsty King Charles XII of Sweden en route to battle, and a diabolical metaphor for the horrors inflicted by European colonialism. It is a journey that unveils the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, life's grandeur, and the humour and tragedy hidden within us all.