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King of Hearts
: :This film was a touchstone of the late 1960s, when it was seen as an antiwar allegory for a world in which madness seemed to reign. Of course, that would probably be true whenever this movie was shown, wouldn't it? Directed by Philippe de Broca and set during World War I, King of Hearts stars Alan Bates as a Scottish soldier separated from his unit in France. He wanders into a small French village that has been abandoned by its residents in the face of oncoming combat. Instead, the town is populated by ...
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Yellow Earth
:Description:A haunting, evocative film set in the barren wilderness of Northern Shaanxi province in 1939. The life of a fourteen year-old peasant girl is changed forever by the arrival of a communist soldier.
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Z
: :Costa-Gavras's Z, winner of the 1970 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, is a classic political thriller, combining intrigue with raw emotional power. The story turns on the investigation of the assassination of a left-wing Greek politician (Yves Montand), and his government's attempts to cover up the murky circumstances. Montand receives death threats as he prepares to give a speech condemning the government, and is then run down in front of numerous witnesses. Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist) plays the judge assigned to the investigation, who gradually discovers how far the state will go ...
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Latcho Drom
: :This majestic, French-made film wishes viewers a 'latcho drom'--a safe journey--as it follows the roots of the Rom, traveling people better known as Gypsies. Stunning and evocative, it transcends language and culture, bringing together the best elements of National Geographic-style documentary and music video in a kind of anthropological MTV. Using only music and image, without any steady characters or plot, award-winning director Tony Gatlif (himself of Rom descent) tells a compelling story of Rom migrations from Northern India to Europe and the rest of the world. Beginning with a gathering of lavishly ...
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The Hairdresser's Husband
: :This majestic, French-made film wishes viewers a 'latcho drom'--a safe journey--as it follows the roots of the Rom, traveling people better known as Gypsies. Stunning and evocative, it transcends language and culture, bringing together the best elements of National Geographic-style documentary and music video in a kind of anthropological MTV. Using only music and image, without any steady characters or plot, award-winning director Tony Gatlif (himself of Rom descent) tells a compelling story of Rom migrations from Northern India to Europe and the rest of the world. Beginning with a gathering of lavishly ...
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The White Balloon
: :In the mid-to-late 1990s, Iran began to be recognized as a refreshing source of low-budget, wryly naturalistic filmmaking, and Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon (winner of the Camera d'Or award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival) was the first Iranian film to get a U.S. art-house release. Simple and spare yet filled with observant detail, it's a mild, beguiling movie about a 7-year-old girl's tenacious quest to buy a cherished goldfish for her family's New Year's Day celebration. That's really all there is to it, but it's wonderfully warm, funny, and generous in ...
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Lisbon Story
: :In the mid-to-late 1990s, Iran began to be recognized as a refreshing source of low-budget, wryly naturalistic filmmaking, and Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon (winner of the Camera d'Or award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival) was the first Iranian film to get a U.S. art-house release. Simple and spare yet filled with observant detail, it's a mild, beguiling movie about a 7-year-old girl's tenacious quest to buy a cherished goldfish for her family's New Year's Day celebration. That's really all there is to it, but it's wonderfully warm, funny, and generous in ...
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Yojimbo
:Description:Kurosawa's blackly humorous film, executed in the style of the American Western, is a sophisticated satire on greed, violence, paranoia, and human weakness. In a nonchalant manner reminiscent of a Bogart hero, a wandering samurai-for-hire (Mifune) turns the war between two clans fighting for control of a small town to his own advantage. One of the most popular Japanese films ever released in the U.S., Yojimbo inspired the Clint Eastwood film A Fistful of Dollars. essential video:This semi-comic 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ran) was inspired by the American ...
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Ponette
: :Fresh, attentive, and emotionally shattering, the French film Ponette is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident on one of the winding roads in the mountainous countryside near Lyon. Played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a controversial but perfectly understandable Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), Ponette turns her grief into something else, something more childish and yet more mature. Convinced that her mother has been visiting her in her dreams, and that some day ...
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Danton
: :Fresh, attentive, and emotionally shattering, the French film Ponette is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident on one of the winding roads in the mountainous countryside near Lyon. Played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a controversial but perfectly understandable Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), Ponette turns her grief into something else, something more childish and yet more mature. Convinced that her mother has been visiting her in her dreams, and that some day ...
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