Book adaptations

The first novel by Elena Ferrante in the adaptation by Mario Martone. What happened to Amalia? Who was with her the night she died? Is Amalia, as the last hours of her life suggest, the woman her daughter Della has always imagined: equivocal, satisfied, predisposed to secret deviances and able to escape her husband's obsessive surveillance?

The German troops are just outside Paris. Georg escapes to Marseille at the last moment. His luggage contains the legacy of a writer named Weidel, who took his own life out of fear of persecution. This legacy comprises a manuscript, some letters and the Mexican Embassy’s assurance of a visa. Only those who can prove that they will leave are allowed in this port town, and this means you need an entry permit from a potential host country. Assuming the identity of Weidel, Georg tries to obtain one of the few scarce passages on a ship. Talks between refugees take place in the corridors of his small hotel, the waiting rooms of consulates, and the cafés and bars down at the harbour. Georg befriends Driss, the son of his late comrade Heinz, who died whilst trying to flee. But when he meets the mysterious Marie, his plans change. Transit is based on Anna Seghers’ eponymous novel which she wrote in exile. The film is set in contemporary Marseille where these characters from the past move around. And so, refugees from back then meet refugees from today, history meets the present, and all of their stories combine to create one eternal transit space.

Two girls grow up as best friends in an Innu community. While Mikuan has a loving family, Shaniss is picking up the pieces of her shattered childhood. As children, they promised each other to stick together no matter what. But as they’re about to turn 17, their friendship is shaken when Mikuan falls for a white boy, and starts dreaming of leaving the reserve that’s now too small for her dreams.

Naples in the early 1980s. Aldo works as a radio announcer giving passionate literature recommendations. After putting his children to bed and telling them a bedtime story, he enters the kitchen, stands next to his wife Vanda and confesses to cheating on her. Completely surprised by this news, and feeling like the ground has disappeared from under her feet, Vanda doesn't know how to react. What does this mean for her and the children? Thirty years later, Vanda and Aldo are still married. Based on the novel “Forever Connected” by Domenico Starnone, Daniele Luchetti shows that you can never escape your family, even if love draws you into a new relationship. This emotional drama, carried by its strong actors, is a highlight of young Italian cinema. Opening film of the Venice Film Festival 2020.

Four Sicilian episodes after the 'Novelle per un anno', in which Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello wrote down earthy and extraordinary stories that his governess once told him. The Vienna Film Museum writes: "What remains incessantly perceptible in these tragic, lyrical and grotesque episodes about painful mothers, moon-addicted farmers, rebellious shepherds, fools and shawls is the powerful, sweeping lust for narration, the infatuation with the glare of day and night, the passion for sensuous, pasty pictures and the love for the country and its creatures. In the fifth episode, which talks abou Pirandello himself, the film comes to life. A journey into childhood. A down-fall over the white, wonderful sand cliffs of Lipari to the sea, which is drunken blue and green: a moment of happiness, a lust that does not want to end".

Orhan Pamuk - Turkey's Nobel laureate for Literature - opens a museum in Istanbul. A museum that's a fiction: its objects trace a tale of doomed love in 1970's Istanbul. The film takes a tour of the objects as the starting point for a trip through love stories, landscapes and the chemistry of the city."Like many people, when I first visited Istanbul, I read Orhan Pamuk. From the very start, my view of the city was through the prism of his imagination. And I knew that Orhan had imagined a place called The Museum of Innocence' and in 2008 had published a big novel of that name. What I didn't know was that, two months after my first visit to Istanbul in 2012, Orhan would open the doors to the real Museum of Innocence. A real, 5-storey museum of real objects - the debris and treasure of a tragic love affair from 30 years ago. A museum which immediately became established as part of Istanbul's real cultural itinerary: the Bosphorus Cruise, Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Grand Bazaar, Museum of Innocence." [Grant Gee]

Rwanda, 1973: high up in the mountains, at the source of the Nile, a black statue of the Virgin Mary watches over a Catholic boarding school for girls. Here, during days filled with classes, mass and practical work, the daughters of politicians, officers and businessmen are educated to one day become productive members of the country’s elite. Whether Hutu or Tutsi, the girls share their curiosity, dreams and joie de vivre. However, the social dynamics and increasing conflicts that characterise the school microcosm mirror the ravages wrought by the colonial order. Deeply symbolic images hint at the genocidal violence that would later engulf the entire country in 1994.

Solaris is a 1972 Soviet science fiction film, co-written and directed by the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It's a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled because the skeleton crew of three scientists have fallen into separate emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station to evaluate the situation only to encounter the same mysterious phenomena as the others.

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.

1973. Uruguay is governed by a military dictatorship. One autumn night, three Tupamaro prisoners are taken from their jail cells in a secret military operation. The order is precise: "As we can’t kill them, let’s drive them mad." The three men will remain in solitary confinement for twelve years. Among them is Pepe Mujica - later to become president of Uruguay.

In a town in the Northwest of the province of Buenos Aires, a group of neighbors is organized to recover the economy of the area, but when the Corralito is implemented in the country and they suffer a fraud, their hopes disappear. Now, they will unite to recover the lost money and give the blow of their lives to their greatest enemy.

Sudan, province of Aljazira, nowadays - When Muzamil was born, a prophecy by the holy man of the village predicts that he will die when he is 20 years old. Muzamil’s father cannot stand the doom and travels away from home. Sakina, as a single mother, raises her son with over protection. One day, Muzamil turns 19.

Summer 1998 - Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn.

Cesare, a former human trafficker, finds the corpse of his nephew Fausto a remote Piedmont valley. In search of the murderer, he himself is suspected. He is also pressured by a young, rebellious villager: Sergio, who wants to escape from the valley and his father, wants to bring refugees abandoned on an alp across the border. In order to help the boy and the refugees, Cesare confronts his fate…

Based on the bestselling children's book by Daniela Kohl, the movie tells the story of six-grader Lotte and her best friend Cheyenne.

Set in the 1960s, high school student Toru Watanabe loses his only friend Kizuki after he commits suicide. Toru, now looking for a new life, enters a university in Tokyo. By chance, Toru meets Kizuki's ex-girlfriend Naoko in the university. They grow close because they both share the same loss. As Toru and Naoko grow even closer, Naoko's sense of loss also grows. After Naoko's 20th birthday, she leaves for a sanitarium in Kyoto. Watanabe, devastated by the situation, meets pure-hearted Midori during the spring semester. Midori looks like a small animal that just came into the world ... Based on Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name.

Which should take precedence - passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. In 1904, in the aftermath of one of the battles of the Russian-Japanese war, Sergei Karenin and Alexey Vronsky find themselves thrown together in a remote Manchurian village, where fate offers them a chance to return to the events long past and, finally, to find the answers both have long been seeking.

At the end of the 1950s in the sleepy English coastal town of Hardborough: Florence Green dreams of opening her own bookshop. Her love of books is the only thing left of her late husband. She is willing to invest her entire fortune and all her strength in making this dream come true. The initial scepticism of the villagers gives way to increasing interest as Florence also sells progressive and controversial works such as Nabokov's "Lolita" and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451". The young widow finds a faithful friend in Mr. Brundish. The educated gentleman lives in seclusion and shares her passion for reading. But she also has a dangerous opponent - the old-established grey eminence of the village, Violet Gamart...

The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wanted to show a really good person in his well-known novel "The Idiot". Ironically, he chose an idiot. The Japanese Akira Kurosawa realized his obsession with the film adaptation of the book: The depiction of the necessary failure in an unjust society. It is an adaptation in the best sense, as the filmmaker transfers the material to the cold Japanese island of Hokkaido. The eponymous hero returns home after an absence and fails because his naivety prevents him from defending himself against the intrigues.

In Colobane, people expect the return of Linguère Ramatou, a former local girl now rumored to be richer than the World Bank. But her generosity has its conditions: she offers a check of ten billion for the death of Dramaan Drameh who refused to admit that he was the father of her child 30 years ago. "Life made made me a whore, now I'm turning the world into a brothel" she tells the citizens of Colobane.

Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities...

Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made: Three men take shelter at one of the gates leading to Kyoto, waiting for the rain to stop. We are under the Heian era (9th - 12th centuries). To pass the time, they discuss an event that took place recently: the discovery of the body of a samurai, probably killed by the bandit Tajomaru. The three men were in fact called to testify at the trial. They each report what they said at the trial, and what they saw. Four versions are opposed, the widow - who was allegedly raped by the bandit - also having her own. So what happened?

Rio de Janeiro, 1950. Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20, are two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each one nourishes a dream: Eurídice of becoming a renowned pianist, Guida of finding true love. In a dramatic turn, they are separated by their father and forced to live apart. They take control of their separate destinies, while never giving up hope of being finding each other. A tropical melodrama from the director of Madame Satã.

In the deep Sardinia of the 1940s, at the age of five, little Gavino is forced to drop out of school after only two months because he now has to help his father keep the animals. He thus grows up in isolation, far from human society. It is thanks to military service at the age of 21 that he can escape his father's grip. He learns to read, which is for him a revelation (he will become a linguist), and when he leaves the army, he rejects the report of quasi-slavery imposed by his father.

Indochina 1931, the Siam Golf. A small family strives against destitution. The mother realizes that the departure of her two grown children - Joseph 20 and Suzanne 16 - is ineluctable. Deceived by the colonial administration, she invested all of her savings in worthless, regularly flooded farmland. Driven to fight against the corrupted bureaucrats who conned her, she puts into place a crazy scheme: building a dam against the sea with the help of the villagers...

Peaceful living and dying are a central theme in this masterpiece by the Japanese Shohei Imamura, a literary film adaptation in the mountain region of Narayama. In a small mountain village on the edge of a valley, all who have turned seventy must leave the community and climb a certain mountain to die. Anyone who defies tradition brings misfortune to his own family. Orin is 69 years old and is about to climb the mountain this winter. But first she has to make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finally finds a wife. With "Narayama Bushiko", the Japanese Shohei Imamura has created what is probably his most beautiful film, a moving story about primordial questions of existence, staged in a fantastically beautiful Japanese mountain landscape and a nature in which people are a natural component. This nature includes coming and going, and this is what the film is about; existence is created between the two poles. This magnificent work, which has received several awards, has been reissued in a new copy.

Alyosha, a 40-year-old filmmaker, falls seriously ill. He remembers his past and collects the memories that marked his life: the house of his childhood, his mother waiting for the improbable return of her husband, the poems of his father, his wife and his son that he has not seen for a long time, the tumult of the Second World War.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods. The film won the 1976 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the Golden Prize and the Prix FIPRESCI at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival and a number of other awards.

The collected work known as "One Thousand and One Nights" survived for centuries through generations of Arab storytellers, and is now recognized as an integral part of world literature. In this filmed performance, storyteller/filmmaker Nacer Khemir sits on chair in the middle of a dimly lit stage and deploys the magic of words to take us on a journey of the imagination. This simple set-up may not seem like much, but it offers the listener an extraordinarily colorful experience and brilliantly emphasizes the oral nature of the work. As we listen to the expertly told stories, we are equally charmed by their intricacies and entranced by their interconnectedness. Even though Khemir illustrates some of the stories with beautifully filmed sequences, the audience's ability to listen is paramount here. Sheherazade used words to avoid impending death, Khemir uses the art of storytelling to breathe a new life into this ancient masterwork.

A man and a woman make love secretly in a room. They desire each other, want each other, bite each other occasionally. Sweet fleeting moments at dusk. At least that's what the man thinks they are. For his fifth feature film, actor and director Mathieu Amalric adapts the exciting crime novel LA CHAMBRE BLEUE by Georges Simenon. Playing the story of Simenon in the 60's, Amalric has placed his version of it entirely in the present.

Late at night, the psychologist Eliane Hess is called to the hospital to take care of Yves, an eight-year-old boy, who just has lost his parents and siblings in a car accident. Eliane is both shocked and curiously drawn to the traumatized boy. As time goes by, she loses the professional distance to the patient, and when Yves' relatives begin a heavy dispute about the boy's future, Eliane makes an unorthodox decision, that throws her life off track.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation, and local partisans are fighting a brutal resistance campaign. A train is derailed not far from the village, where Sushenya, a rail worker, lives with his family. Innocent Sushenya is arrested with a group of saboteurs, but the German officer makes a decision not to hang him with the others and sets him free. Rumours of Sushenya’s treason spread quickly, and partisans Burov and Voitik arrive from the forest to get revenge. As the partisans lead their victim through the forest, they are ambushed, and Sushenya finds himself one-to-one with his wounded enemy. Deep in an ancient forest, where there are neither friends nor enemies, and where the line between treason and heroism disappears, Sushenya is forced to make a moral choice under immoral circumstances.

This fairy tale tells the story of Hassan, a young man who is taught calligraphy by his master. One day he runs across a portion of an old text which convinces him that it holds the secrets to love. With the help of an impudent young boy and the boy's monkey (whom the boy thinks is an enchanted prince), Hassan sets out to find the rest of the manuscript. What he finds instead is the beauteous Aziz. Despite their being separated by war, they are soon reunited. This film takes us in the midst of a time when djinns and visions were still, real. In its world we discover the peaceful coexistence of different cultures, religions and forms of life.

Up until the middle of the 19Th century, poverty stricken mountain farmers from the Ticino area of Switzerland frequently sold their children to Milan as chimney sweeps or spazzacamini. That is also young Giorgios fate. He is forced to climb through pitch black chimneys, flinging down the soot with his bare hands. But he does not lose heart. Together with his buddies sharing in the same misery, he establishes the association of Black Brothers. They stick together, struggling against their penury and getting involved in fights with the street gangs of Milan. The film tells of the gripping adventures of the chimney sweep boys and their spectacular escape back to their native land.

Matthias is the illegitimate son of a factory worker. He lives as an indentured child labourer at his dictatorial aunt’s remote guesthouse. The only thing he knows in life are hard work and hard punches. After a sudden death in the family, the unhappy boy finds the opportunity to make his way to his mother. This 1941 literary adaptation is an almost forgotten jewel of Swiss film history that offers an impressive insight into Eastern Switzerland’s embroidery industry.

The newly-wed Antoine climbs an alp with the elderly Séraphin. A few weeks later a terrible landslide takes people and animals to their death. There are no survivors. The few who have escaped the disaster inform the village. Thérèse, Antoine's young wife, is pregnant. It's difficult for her to see her pregnancy through and adjust to her role as a young widow. Two months later, Antoine manages to free himself from the rubble. The villagers think he's a ghost. Finally they come to accept the fact he is alive. But he cannot accept the fact he is the only survivor. He returns to the mountain, convinced that Séraphin is still alive. At dawn, Thérèse discovers his disappearance. She wants to look for him among the debris, in order to “snatch from the dead something still alive”.

Marita is a supervisor at the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires, the establishment that trains the country’s future elite. She is 23 and wants to do things right. Mr Biasutto, the head supervisor, immediately sees in her the zealous employee that he has been waiting for and teaches her to become the vigilant eye attentive to everything but that avoids attracting the attention of others: the invisible eye. Marita then throws herself into the relentless surveillance of this tiny, closed world, imagining, detecting, pursuing...

Uli, the farm hand of the Boden farm, is a bawdy, careless, spendthrift fellow. Lectured by his master, he becomes aware that if he is to escape his abject condition, he must reform. He accordingly leaves the farm girl Anneliesi, turns his back on his drinking companions and starts working hard. His reputation improves so much so that Joggeli, an old farmer, hires him to restore order in the Giungge farm where chaos is rife. In using strong-arms tactics, Uli attains his ends and soon becomes indispensable. Attracted to the sweet Vreneli, Uli is unfortunately lured by Elisi, the master's scheming daughter. It is based on the classic 1841 novel of the same name by Jeremias Gotthelf.

Uli, the tenant on the 'Glunggenhof', leads a happy life with his wife and child. Weather luck and honest work bring him rich harvests, and so he looks hopefully into the future. In the nearby Stöckli live the old Joggeli and his wife, the 'Glunggenbäuerin', the good soul of the farm. They also profit from the success of their tenant. But Uli becomes overconfident and, advised by false friends, gets entangled in unclean business. When a storm destroys the harvest and Uli is confined to bed by a serious illness, things quickly go downhill. Although Vreneli fights bravely against all adversity, the farm and its inhabitants are in danger of ruin. Only when the recovering Uli with a heavy heart admits to his mistakes and shows remorse, the tide seems to turn

Claireece 'Precious' Jones is sixteen and far from having a nice life. Her mother abuses her, her father has impregnated her for the second time, she is severely overweight and can neither read nor write. But one day she gets the chance to break out of her dreary everyday life. At an alternative school she can catch up on her graduation and experiences for the first time what it is like to be respected and loved by others.