Archive

Kujira no machi

Machi, Tomohiko and Hotaru attend the same high school. Machi misses her older brother, who disappeared six years earlier. The trio takes up his trail, which leads them first to Tokyo and then across the sea.Together, these two girls and a boy comprise a fragile love triangle. It is a game of attraction and boundary setting, of closeness and distance. The three of them are atan age marked by profound insecurity and a constant desire to search, as...

Kuma

When Ayse celebrates her wedding almost everyone in her Turkish village believes her to have married Hassan who is just a few years her senior. But in fact, she is sent to Vienna as Hassan’s father Ahmet’s second wife. She arrives in Austria and receives a mixed welcome from her new family. At first, Ahmet’s children, some of whom are older than Ayse, turn their back on the girl. Only Fatma, Ahmet’s wife of many years who is now dying of cancer, ...

Kumu Hina

She feels more like a boy than even most boys. This documentary follows eleven-year-old Hawaiian girl Ho’onani who dreams of leading her school’s traditional hula group. Hula is a mixture of dance and theatrical performance that is central to the culture of the Hawaiian people and requires a lot of practice. Here too, Ho’onani would like to dance on the boys’ side. Normally she wouldn't be allowed to do so but Ho’onani is fortunate to have as...

Kød & Blod

“You’re too baked, sweetheart”, says Mads´ mother after greeting him with a kiss on the lips. In this family it is okay to bend the law, as long as you do it right. A twisted lesson the 17-year-old Ida is about to learn. Having recently lost her mother in a car accident, she has been taken in by her aunt and three cousins, whom she barely knows. Theirs is a loving home, but it soon transpires that the family, led by its caring but disciplinarian...

L'Animale

In Austria the final school exam is known as the ‘Matura’. Unlike the German word ‘Abitur’ (from the Latin ‘abire’ meaning ‘to walk away’), the Austrian term also includes the notion of coming of age. Mati wants to become a veterinary doctor, like her mother, and therefore leave the confines of her small-town universe for Vienna. But is she ready for this future? Standing in her ‘Matura’ dress with her long hair scraped back into a tight bun and...

L'âge atomique

L’ÂGE ATOMIQUE follows what begins as a pleasure-seeking journey into Parisian night life and ends in abandonment and disillusionment in a remote forest at dawn. What are Victor and Rainer looking for when they take a train into the seemingly claustrophobic centre of Paris at night? The artificial paradise of a night club, amusement, sex, drugs, but also oblivion. Full of profound sadness and gloom, this is not the Paris of rationality and light,...

L'arbre et la forêt

Frédérick runs a tree nursery. For sixty years this elderly man has not only cultivated seeds and seedlings but also harbours a secret. His wife and his eldest son are the only ones who know the truth.
But then, Frédérick’s son dies; the relationship between father and son was not always free of conflict and because of this Frédérick decides to open up to others close to him and admit something he couldn’t bring himself to mention before.
When Fr...

La Bête dans la jungle

It begins at the end of the 1970s, amidst the glittering nights of a club as a place of endless (im)possibilities and the timeless clockwork of a city. This is where John and May are waiting for an extraordinary, all-changing moment to occur. Around them, everything is loud and in motion, while they hold out in silence. Twenty-five years pass as they follow world events on their cathode-ray tube television set: Mitterrand’s term in office, the AI...

La bocca del lupo

Enzo returns to Genoa after 14 years of imprisonment. He goes about the city, which has changed after many years. In a little house in the old town ghetto, his companion Mary waits for him. They exchanged letters and messages while he was away. This poetic portrait of a criminal and his transsexual partner is at the same time a portrait of Genoa, especially the areas shaped by immigrants.
If we never tire of seeing love stories in the cinema, it ...

La casa dell'amore

Throughout its 77 minutes, the film never once leaves the small Milan apartment of Bianca Dolce Miele, a dark safe space illuminated by the warm light of the occasional candle, with objects arranged with ritualistic intention and a black cat always on the roam. A map of the heavens hangs above the bed, the outside world is accessed via telephone. “I’m always here, any time,” she promises her clients in a deep, throaty voice. “Give me half an hou...

La Ducha

A couple spends their last morning together in the bathroom. One of them is about to leave the country. The other has decided to stay. But who will take care of the cat?
Interview with Maria José San Martín
A couple / a daily situation / a seperation. In leaving out many words you open the situation to a brider extent. How much scripted was your film / how much change during the process of shooting and editing appeared- let us know about your appr...

La fiera y la fiesta

Jean-Louis Jorge (1947-2000) was a Dominican filmmaker and the author of a sensual and transgressive body of work. This film is both dedicated to this unsung hero - unknown to most of the world but revered in his home country - and wholeheartedly embedded in his universe.
Aging punk diva Vera arrives in Santo Domingo to direct her beloved friend Jean-Louis Jorge’s unfinished project: a musical film entitled ‘La fiera y la fiesta’. Welcoming her ...

La Isla está Encantada con Ustedes

In 1511, indigenous people in Puerto Rico seduced and murdered a representative of colonial power.
Some 300 years later, a further chapter of colonial history: In 1803, by order of the Spanish Crown,
a doctor named Francisco Javier de Balmis travelled to Puerto Rico with a number of orphans. They were carriers of the live vaccine with which Balmis executed one of the first mass immunisations against smallpox. A glance to the present day: In 2014,...

La León

Alvaro's world is one of rivers and streams. This remote island off the Argen tinean coast is where he ekes out a humble existence. Fishing and reed-cutting are his only sources of income. Out here, it is as if time has stood still. Alvaro's homosexuality makes him just as much of an outsider as does his love of books. The only link between this forlorn part of the world in the middle of the wide ocean and the city on the mainland is skip...

La ley del deseo

Pablo and Tina are brothers. Their parents separated while the two boys were still young. Tina's real name is Tino, but when he moved in with his father, he started to have a sexual relationship with him, changed his sex and became his father's lover. A few years later her father leaves her and Tina no longer feels attracted to men... from now on she hates them.
Pablo writes film scripts and makes films. He is in love with Juan, a charmin...

La Mif

“Who are you?” – “The queen of punks, in the land of pain in the ass.”

Seven girls live under the same roof but haven’t chosen each other, just like a family. Emerging from difficult backgrounds, here in the safe house, the girls find a new community, in a way they’d never experienced before. They are sharing joy and pain, passionately rebel against the shortcomings of their surrounding – the young women’s temperaments are different, their lust ...

La Prima Sueca

It's not long to go until Cata's 15th birthday and she's getting more nervous by the day. She's irritated about her dress, her chilled-out friends, everything! Even her level-headed and reserved cousin from Sweden annoys her. But Cata's moodiness gradually gives way to tentative feelings of affection. In a sensitive portrayal the two directors gently capture the emotional whirlwind and irritations of a teenager.

La Religieuse

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is
sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself face...

La Santa

Father and daughter are getting ready for a grand procession through the village, but things are strained between them. Dad has arranged for his thirteen-year-old daughter, Maria to play the Virgin Mary. Maria doesn’t want to, but her father insists. He hopes that this will heal her. Maria has no idea if she wants to be healed – and from what, anyway? Her father refuses to back down and Maria prepares herself for the role she has to play. But she...

Ladies Only

A small film crew ventures into the compartments of Mumbai’s local trains that are reserved for women. “What makes you angry?” is the simple question the filmmaker poses to the train’s female passengers. Acquaintances and women who are encountering each other by chance are invited to reveal their opinions and stories in a space that is public, yet protected. Their answers and observations are manifold: sometimes funny, sometimes depressing, s...