Foreign - Movies

Daaaaaalí!

Foreign

For journalist Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier) the assignment to interview renowned artist Salvador Dalí is a great career opportunity–if only he would agree to sit still and answer a single question. What begins as a 15-minute conversation blows up into a bonafide cinematographic documentary portrait, provided the world’s most enormous cameras are available to film it. As Judith’s interview is delayed, detoured, disrupted, and deranged by Dalí’s inexhaustible self-regard, the journalist finds herself becoming the subject. The legendary painter’s artistry and ego know no bounds, and Daaaaaalí! dutifully casts no less than five actors (Édouard Baer, Jonathan Cohen, Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï, and Didier Flamand) as Salvador Dalí in this prismatic portrait. The prolific Quentin Dupieux’s latest comedy is an exercise in dream logic and surrealist homage, with the rug pulled out from under you again and again before you even manage to get up off the floor.

The Brand New Testament

Foreign

God exists! Sadly, he is a real scoundrel. A misanthropic family man living in Brussels, he is a petty and tyrannical force in the lives of the masses. From a computer in his apartment's private office, God (Benoît Poelvoorde) invents new laws of the universe to toy with humanity (Law no. 2127: "The required amount of sleep is always 10 more minutes"). He is no better with his put-upon wife and rebellious 10-year-old daughter Ea, his lesser-known offspring. Disgusted by her father's antics, Ea hacks into his computer, leaking the predestined death dates of everyone in the world and embarking on a quest to draft a new testament with a modern band of apostles. Now freed from the uncertainty of death, the values and priorities of mankind begin to shift in this hilarious and visionary romp from director Jaco Van Dormael.

Welcome Aboard (Bienvenue à bord)

Foreign

Isabelle (Valérie Lemercier), head of HR for Costa Cruises, has made the cardinal error of having an affair with her boss (Lionnel Astier). But before the inaugural cruise of the company’s flagship vessel, he decides to throw her out of his life and out of her job! Some women seek vengeance with poison, others with firearms or scandal. Isabelle opts for Rémy (Frank Dubosc), a flamboyant loser who has screwed up everything on land, and who thinks that maybe he’ll do better at sea. She signs him up as on-board entertainer. At first, he proves to be the worst nightmare for the Chairman and Cruise Director (Gérard Darmon). But gradually, Rémy finds his way on this floating palace, and with it, love and success. He changes his own destiny and that of all those who sail with him.

Norwegian Dream

Foreign

Robert, a Polish immigrant working at a fish factory in Norway, has come to earn money to pay off his mother's debts. Robert realizes he has feelings for his colleague Ivar. For fear of losing his position within a group of Poles at the factory, he hides his feelings, especially when it turns out that Ivar is doing vogue and is an aspiring drag queen.

Bienvenue chez les Cht'is (Welcome to the Sticks)

Foreign

Philippe Abrams is the director of the Salon-de-Provence post office. He's married to Julie, whose depressed state makes life impossible. To make her happy, Philippe plots to get transferred to the Côte d’Azur. But it backfires, and he is transferred to Bergues, a small town in northern France, instead.

The Beast

Foreign

The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely "erase" their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent "retribution." Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (SAINT LAURENT, NOCTURAMA) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn- of-the-century novella, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, THE BEAST poignantly conveys humanity’s struggle against dissociative identity and emotionless existence.

Tale of Cinema

Foreign

Tale of Cinema uses the trope of a film within a film to tell two stories, that of a depressive young man (Ki-woo Lee) who forms a suicide pact with a friend (Ji-won Uhm); and the tale of a filmmaker (Kim Sangkyung) who sees a film that he believes was based on his life, and who meets the actress from the film with view to turning their onscreen relationship into reality.

Samba

Foreign

From the acclaimed directing duo of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (The Intouchables), Samba is the richly entertaining chronicle of an undocumented kitchen worker battling deportation from his adopted home in Paris. For ten years, Senegalese immigrant Samba (Omar Sy – winner of the 2012 César Award for Best Actor) has stayed under the government radar, taking menial kitchen jobs in the hope of becoming a professional chef. Suddenly, as his longtime ambitions for a better life seem just within reach, immigration authorities hit Samba with an order to leave France immediately. Stubbornly holding onto his dream, Samba pins his hopes for a reprieve on a local immigration advocacy center and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), an emotionally vulnerable volunteer with little experience, but plenty of heart. He finds a second home at the center with Alice and her colleagues, including brusque law student Manu (Izïa Higelin), do-gooder Marcelle (Hélène Vincent) and naïve Maggy (Jacqueline Jehanneuf), as they search for a way for him to stay in France. As Samba plunges into the unpredictable world of transient labor, guided by his fun-loving Brazilian buddy Wilson (Tahar Rahim), Alice finds herself deeply moved by his determination. Still trying to put her own life back together after a stress-related breakdown, she takes Samba under her wing, while trying to ignore the growing attraction she feels for him. As the immigrant and the burned-out corporate executive tentatively draw closer, their unlikely cross-cultural connection gives them each the courage to reinvent themselves in this vibrant romantic comedy full of tender humor and heartfelt optimism.

Jacky in the Kingdom of Women (Jacky au royaume des filles)

Foreign

In the People’s Democratic Republic of Bubunne, it's the women who are in power, who give the orders and who fight the wars, while the men wear veils and look after the home. One of these men, Jacky, aged 20, has the same inaccessible fantasy as all the bachelors in the land – to marry the Colonelle, daughter of the dictatrix known as the Generale, and have lots of daughters with her. But when the Generale decides to organize a grand ball to find a husband for her daughter, things look bad for Jacky. Mistreated by his aunt's family, he sees his dream start to slip away.

Sand Dollars

Foreign

Every afternoon Noelí, a young Dominican girl, goes to the beaches at Las Terrenas. Along with her boyfriend, they look for ways to make a living at the expense of one of the hundreds of tourists that wander the beach. As people parade through her life, Noelí has a steady client, a mature French woman who, as time goes by, has found an ideal refuge on the island to spend her last years. Noelí’s boyfriend feigns to be her brother and outlines a plan in which Noelí travels to Paris with the old lady and sends him money every month. For Noelí, the relationship with the old lady is one of convenience, but the feelings become more intense as the departure date closes in.

Borsalino and Co.

Foreign

Marseille. Heaps of flowers and funeral wreaths... A Mafia funeral in 1934. While François Capella's casket is gradually lowered, Roch Siffredi, dressed in black, stands motionless holding his hat and swears to revenge his friend. "A man who no longer defends his colors is no longer a man." But life goes on and Roch is at the peak of his success, controlling the whole city with its houses of prostitution, gambling dens and even the Alcazar, a new vaudeville theatre which is all the rage with the people of Marseille. Roch Siffredi chooses the first favourable opportunity to dispose, in an offensive manner, of the killer responsible for his associate's death. This killer is employed by Giovanni Volpone, a newcomer in Marseille with German ideas and American methods and capital. The reaction is sudden and brutal. Like a hurricane, Volpone destroys Siffredi's empire in a single night. But the oath Siffredi made to revenge his friend is always on his mind.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Foreign

From acclaimed Korean writer/director Kim Ki-Duk comes this exquisitely beautiful and award-winning human drama set on a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft. Under the vigilant eye of Old Monk (Yeong-su Oh), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel. In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man (Young-min Kim), experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him to dark deeds. With winter, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew. With an extraordinary attention to visual detail, Kim has crafted an original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from innocence, through love and evil, to enlightenment and finally rebirth.

Army of Shadows

Foreign

The most personal film by the underworld poet Jean-Pierre Melville, who had participated in the French Resistance himself, this tragic masterpiece, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, recounts the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought in the Resistance. Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret star as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime. Long underappreciated in France and unseen in the United States, the atmospheric and gripping thriller ARMY OF SHADOWS is now widely recognized as the summit of Melville’s career, channeling the exquisite minimalism of his gangster films to create an unsparing tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

War of the Buttons (La Guerre des Boutons)

Foreign

A village in the South of France, 1960. A band of country boys aged 7 to 14, led by fearless young Lebrac, wages an uncompromising battle against their sworn rivals, the kids from the neighboring village. A war of honor and allegiance that's been kept alive for generations, in which humiliation is the most fearsome defeat and no tactic is too extreme, including attacking the enemy stark naked! With their newest recruit, the brave and ingenious tomboy called Lanterne, victory is a skipping stone's throw away. But it's not easy to be an army of half-pints and not get into trouble with Mom and Dad after coming home from battle with torn clothes and missing buttons!

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Foreign

After a long and explosive life in munitions, involving a number of the seminal moments and phenomena of the 20th century, including the Spanish Civil War, the Atomic Bomb, and Cold War espionage, Allan Karlsson finds himself - on his 100th birthday - stuck in a tranquil Swedish nursing home. Determined to escape the monotony, he hops out a window and kicks off a hilarious and unexpected comic-adventure by way of a stolen briefcase, a roughneck biker gang, and an escaped circus elephant named Sonya. Adapted from the runaway international best-seller, THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED is a charming, globe-trotting riff on world history and the highest-grossing Swedish film of all-time.

The Prince

Foreign

The Prince is an explosive homoerotic prison drama set in a repressive 1970s Chilean prison. During a night of heavy drinking, Jaime, a hot-tempered narcissist, suddenly stabs his best friend. He is sent to jail for murder and there, alone and afraid, he comes under the protection of a tough older inmate known as “The Stallion.” The unlikely pair begin a clandestine romance but violent power struggles inside the penitentiary threaten their bond. This searing story of survival at all costs, takes its inspiration from Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’amour and Fassbinder’s Querelle in its affecting exploration of masculine aggression, conflicting loyalties and pent-up sexual desires.

Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

Foreign

Fifty years ago, the Japanese Defense Forces killed Godzilla or so they thought. When a series of terrifying natural disasters begin to plague Japan, including the inexplicable offshore sinking of a U.S. submarine, a mystic old man warns his nation that Godzilla has come back to destroy Japan as revenge for all the souls lost in the Pacific War. When mere military might can not squash the monster, the mystic man awakens the Holy Beasts of Yamato - King Ghidorah, Mothra and Baragon, sleeping giants that protected Japan in ancient times. These untamed mammoth beasts take on Godzilla with frightening supernatural brute power that has been 2,000 years in the making. Tradition and technology collide in this chilling high-tech, cutting-edge fable.

The Man in the White Suit

Foreign

A hapless inventor from Northern England is beset on all sides after inventing a pure white material that threatens the entire textile industry.

The Bastards' Fig Tree

Foreign

In Ana Murugarren’s whimsical THE BASTARDS’ FIG TREE, a fascist soldier in the Spanish Civil War becomes a fig-tree obsessed hermit after looking into the vengeful eyes of a young boy whose father and brother he had violently executed.

The Farewell Party

Foreign

The Farewell Party is a unique, compassionate and unlikely funny story of a group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home who decide to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of their assistance begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with a life and death dilemma.

Foreign Movies