Previous Films

Arguably Luchino Visconti’s best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s.  Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi’s troops have embarked in Sicily.  While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi’s army and returns home a war hero and begins courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale).

Magic tricks can’t compete with rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, so a French illusionist finds himself touring Scotland’s shabby pubs and run-down restaurants.  But things brighten for him when he meets Alice, a girl who believes his powers are real.  Together they travel to Edinburgh for a performance, but he doesn’t have the heart to reveal that his feats are merely tricks, and risks financial ruin by giving her gifts supplied by his “magic.”  Superb animated feature based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati.

In this visually and conceptually impressive film, two-bit Berlin criminal Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) delivers some smuggled loot for his boss, Ronnie (Heino Ferch), but accidentally leaves the 100,000 Deutschmark payment in a subway car.  Given twenty minutes to come up with the money, he calls his girlfriend, Lola (Franka Potente), who sprints through the streets of the city to try to beg the money out of her bank manager father (Herbert Knaup) and get to Manni before he does something desperate.

An order of Trappist monks whose members include Christian (Lambert Wilson) and Luc (Michael Lonsdale) live among the Muslim population in a quiet corner of Algeria.  As the country is plunged into civil war in the mid-1990s, the men of God must decide whether to stay among the impoverished residents who have been their neighbours, or flee the encroaching fundamentalist terrorists.  The situation that unfolds, based on actual events, has tragic consequences.

Physics professor Larry Gopnik can’t believe his life.  His wife is leaving him for his best friend.  His unemployed brother won’t move off the couch.  Someone is threatening his career.  His kids are a mystery and his neighbour is tormenting him by sunbathing nude.  Struggling to make sense of it all, Larry consults three different rabbis and their answers lead him on a twisted journey of faith, family and mortality.

Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), a beautiful young Frenchwoman who works at a small-town boutique selling umbrellas, falls for dashing mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo).  Their brief romance is interrupted when Guy is drafted to serve in the Algerian War.  Though pregnant by Guy, Geneviève marries an older businessman, Roland (Marc Michel), and begins to move on with her life. Throughout the film, all the characters’ dialogue is conveyed through song.  Music by Michel Legrand.

In West Bengal, both Harriet, the daughter of a jute mill owner, and her best friend, Valerie, become captivated by dashing visitor Captain John, who ignores them for sultry Melanie. However, all find that their lives are shaken up after Harriet’s brother is involved in a tragedy.  The future Indian film maker Satyajit Ray, then working in advertising, met Renoir while The River was in production and the two men became friends.

Drawing inspiration from Italian neo-realism of the late 1940s and the work of pioneering directors such as Fellini, Visconti and Pasolini, Volver addresses themes of sexual abuse, loneliness and death, mixing the genres of farce, tragedy, melodrama and magic realism. Set in the La Mancha region (Almodóvar’s place of birth) around an eccentric family of women, Penélope Cruz plays Raimunda, a working-class woman forced to go to great lengths to protect her teenage daughter. To assist in a family crisis, her mother comes back from the dead to tie up loose ends.

An account of the creation of the Israeli state from 1948 to the present.  In four episodes, Suleiman recounts family stories inspired by his father Fuad’s private diaries starting from when he was a resistance fighter in 1948, and his mother’s letters to family members who were forced to leave the country during the same period.  In addition, Suleiman also combines his own memories in an attempt to provide a portrait of the daily life of the Palestinians who were labelled “Israeli-Arabs” after they chose to remain in their country and become a minority.

As a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the 1982 war with Lebanon, Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman witnessed the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but realises that he has no memory of the event.  In 2006, he seeks out others who were in Beirut at the time to discuss their memories, including a psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorders and the first journalist to cover the massacre.  The entire film is animated, excluding one short segment of news archive footage.  The film is officially banned in Lebanon.