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THE BAND'S VISIT |
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BE KIND REWIND |
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BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD Director: Sidney Lumet Website Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet directs this absorbing suspense thriller about a family facing the worst enemy of all – itself. Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is, the store owners are Andy and Hank's actual mom and pop and, when the seemingly perfect crime goes awry, the damage lands right at their doorstep. |
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BELLA Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde Website An international soccer star is on his way to sign a multi-million dollar contract when something happens that brings his career to an abrupt end. A waitress, struggling to make it in New York City, discovers something about herself that she's unprepared for. In one irreversible moment, their lives are turned upside down, until an impetuous action brings them together and turns an ordinary day into an unforgettable experience. Once a famous athlete, and now a cook at his brother's Mexican restaurant, Joséhas retreated from the world but he recognizes something in Nina, a young waitress, and reaches out to her. In the course of a single day, he not only confronts his past but shows her how the healing power of a family can help her embrace the future. |
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CARAMEL Director: Nadine Labaki Website In Beirut, five women meet regularly in a beauty salon, a colorful and sensual microcosm of the city where several generations come into contact, talk and confide in each other. In the salon, their intimate and liberated conversations revolve around men, sex and motherhood, between haircuts and sugar waxing with caramel. |
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CASSANDRA’S DREAM Director: Woody Allen Website Set in contemporary London, CASSANDRA’S DREAM is a powerful and thrilling story about two brothers who are desperate to better their troubled lives. One is a chronic gambler in debt over his head, and the other is a young man in love with a beautiful actress he has recently met. Their lives gradually become entangled into a sinister situation with intense and unfortunate results. |
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CONTROL Director: Anton Corbijn Website Ian Curtis has aspirations beyond the trappings of small town life in 1970's England. Wanting to emulate his musical heroes he joins a band, and his musical ambition begins to thrive. Soon though, the everyday fears and emotions, that fuel his music, slowly begin to eat away at him. Married young, with a daughter, he is distracted from his family commitments by a new love and the growing expectations of his band. The strain manifests itself in his health. With epilepsy adding to his guilt and depression, desperation takes hold. Surrendering to the weight on his shoulders, Ian’s tortured soul consumes him. |
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THE COUNTERFEITERS
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky Website THE COUNTERFEITERS is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. His mischievous life of cards, booze, and women in Berlin ends abruptly when he is arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. Salomon exhibits exceptional skills there and is soon hand-picked to join a group of professionals who are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Berhard. Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones. |
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DARFUR NOW Director: Ted Braun Website DARFUR NOW is a call to action for people everywhere to help stop the catastrophe in Darfur, Sudan. In this documentary the struggles and achievements of six very different individuals bring to light the situation in Darfur and illustrate the absolute need to get involved. From a UCLA graduate in Manhattan Beach, California, to a Darfurian woman who joins rebel forces, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, to a United Nations humanitarian on the ground in Sudan, to an internationally known actor and activist, and finally to a community leader in a West Darfur refugee camp, the film portrays the heroic efforts of six people trying to resolve a humanitarian tragedy unfolding before our very eyes. |
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THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY Director: Julian Schnabel Website THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him in a life-altered state. While the physical challenges of Bauby's fate leave him with little hope for the future, he begins to discover how his life's passions, his rich memories and his newfound imagination can help him achieve a life without boundaries. |
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FUNNY GAMES Director: Michael Haneke Website In this provocative and brutal thriller from director Michael Haneke, a vacationing family gets an unexpected visit from two deeply disturbed young men. Their idyllic holiday turns nightmarish as they are subjected to unimaginable terrors and struggle to stay alive. |
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GRACE IS GONE Director: James C. Strouse Website GRACE IS GONE is a heart-wrenching drama about a young father (John Cusack) whose soldier wife has just been killed in Iraq. Rather than tell his two daughters the news, he decides to take them on a cross-country road trip to an amusement park. The story was inspired by a similar trip director Strouse made with his older brother and his two children several years ago. |
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HONEYDRIPPER Director: John Sayles Website In 1950, a rural Alabama juke joint called the Honeydripper Lounge is going belly up. It’s owner’s last shot at making it work turns sour when the famous Guitar Sam doesn’t show up for his packed house of patrons. To save the Honeydripper, the owner desperately turns to a wayward youth named Sonny who claims he can play a guitar better than any ‘Guitar Sam.’ When Sonny takes the stage and launches into his first scalding electric licks, Tyrone will learn if it's lights out for the Honeydripper or if his luck has changed. |
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HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE Director: Doris Dörrie Website This documentary profiles Zen Master Edward Espe Brown and shows the art of Zen and cooking, which Brown has been practicing for more than 40 years. As a chef, he is typically short-tempered and exacting, but as a Buddhist master he is exactly the opposite. A charming taskmaster who regularly punctures his holiness with moments of self-deprecation and humor, Espe Brown's observations on modern culture, cooking and human foibles are often as acerbic and hilarious as they are profound. |
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I'M NOT THERE Director: Todd Haynes Website I’M NOT THERE the highly anticipated biographical film about legendary singer and songwriter Bob Dylan, follows six distinct characters, depicting different stages of Dylan's life, embodying a different aspect of his life story and music. It's the first biographical feature project to secure the approval of the music legend. |
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JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS Director: Jonathan Demme Website JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS is an intimate, surprising encounter with President Jimmy Carter. Following the path of Mr. Carter's recent controversial book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Academy Awardİ-winning director Jonathan Demme reveals a complex individual who, with the gusto and determination of a youngster, criss-crosses the country to get his message across, even as that message creates a media onslaught in which his credibility and judgment are called into question. The films explores both the private and public sides of Jimmy Carter, whose intense sense of justice compels him to pursue, with undiminished energy and hope, his lifelong and deeply spiritual vision of reconciliation and peace. |
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JUNO
Director: Jason Reitman Website JUNO stars Ellen Page as the title character, a whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker. With the help of her hot best friend Leah, Juno finds her unborn child a "perfect" set of parents: an affluent suburban couple, Mark and Vanessa, longing to adopt. Luckily, Juno has the total support of her parents as she faces some tough decisions, flirts with adulthood and ultimately figures out where she belongs. |
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THE KITERUNNER
Director: Marc Forster Website THE KITERUNNER is an epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy to the atrocities of the Taliban reign. This unforgettable story of redemption is based on the best selling phenomena "The Kite Runner." |
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LAKE OF FIRE Director: Tony Kaye Website Ever since Roe v. Wade, the United States has been deeply divided on the issue of abortion. In that landmark case, an unmarried woman was refused an abortion in Texas. The judicial challenge that followed won women the right to legal abortions. Proponents and opponents have lined up on either side of the issue ever since, launching verbal abuse--and worse--at each other. As the religious right has increasingly flexed its power, the issue has become even more divisive – and violent. Here, the viewer gains a greater understanding of what motivates each side. |
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LARS AND THE REAL GIRL Director: Craig Gillespie Website LARS AND THE REAL GIRL is a heartfelt comedy starring Academy-Award nominated Ryan Gosling as Lars Lindstrom a loveable introvert whose emotional baggage has kept him from fully embracing life. After years of what is almost solitude, he invites Bianca, a friend he met on the internet to visit him. He introduces Bianca to his Brother, Gus, and his wife, Karen, and they are stunned. They don't know what to say to Lars or Bianca – because she is a life-size doll, not a real person and he is treating her as though she is alive. They consult the family doctor who explains this is a delusion he's created – for what reason she doesn't yet know but they should all go along with it. What follows is an emotional journey for Lars and the people around him. |
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THE LIFE OF REILLY
Director: Frank L. Anderson, Barry Poltermann Website If, in 1940, you had a lobotomized aunt, an institutionalized father, a racist mother, and were the only gay kid on the block, what do you think the odds would be that you'd end up a Tony winner, a staple of television, and a generational icon? Enter THE LIFE OF REILLY, The clichégoes that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case, it is also funnier and more heartbreaking. Charles Nelson Reilly, famous for his game show innuendos and "X Files" guest appearances, takes us through his bizarre, star-studded, tragic, hilarious, and ultimately amazing life with a potent blend of tenderness and quick one-liners. |
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MAN IN THE CHAIR Director: Michael Schroeder Website Dead set on becoming a director, an ambitious teen enlists the residents of the Motion Picture Retirement Home to help him complete his student film. The touching, unlikely relationships that develop pay tribute to the behind-the-scenes artists who bring movies to life, as well as those whom society have treated as disposable. |
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MARGOT AT THE WEDDING Director: Noah Baumbach Website Acclaimed Academy Award¨-nominated writer/director Noah Baumbach (THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, KICKING AND SCREAMING) brings to life a sharply observed portrait of a family in distress. His latest project is an unflinchingly honest story about coming to terms with one's family and oneself, a journey that is both funny and heartbreaking. The film stars Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black. |
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MR. UNTOUCHABLE
Director: Marc Levin Website The true-life story of a Harlem's notorious Nicky Barnes, a junkie turned multimillionaire drug-lord, MR. UNTOUCHABLE takes its audience deep inside the heroin industry of the 1970s. The most powerful black drug kingpin in New York City history, Barnes came from humble beginnings to make himself and his comrades rich beyond their wildest dreams, ultimately reaching national infamy in 1977 when the New York Times put him on the front cover of their magazine with the headline "Mr. Untouchable." Soon after, it all came crumbling down, and facing a life sentence without parole, Barnes started naming names. With the first hand testimony from "the black Godfather" himself, this documentary tells an epic story of business, excess, greed and revenge. |
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MUSIC WITHIN Director: Steven Sawalich Website This striking directorial debut and moving true story is about a man who heard his music, and released it to improve the lives of millions of people with disabilities. Ron Livingston enthusiastically portrays Richard Pimentel, a brilliant public speaker who went to Vietnam to “earn the right to have a point of view“, and lost most of his hearing in an explosion. Facing discrimination instead of a hero’s welcome, Pimentel heard the ‘music within’ himself and went on to become a brilliant motivational speaker and writer. |
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MY KID COULD PAINT THAT Director: Amir Bar-Lev Website A 4-year-old girl whose paintings are compared to Kandinsky, Pollock and even Picasso, has sold $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. Is she a genius of abstract expressionism, a tiny charlatan, or an exploited child whose parents have sold her out for the glare of the media and the lure of the almighty dollar? |
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NANKING Director: Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman Website NANKING is a powerful reminder of the heartbreaking toll that war takes on the innocent, and a testament to the courage and conviction of a few individuals determined to act in the face of evil. The film tells the story of the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China in the early days of World War II and focuses on the efforts of a small group of unarmed Westerners who established a Safety Zone where over 200,000 Chinese found refuge. The events of the film are told through deeply moving interviews with Chinese survivors, archival footage, and chilling testimonies of Japanese soldiers, interwoven with staged readings of the Westerners' letters and diaries. |
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NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Website NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a mesmerizing new thriller from Academy Award¨ winning filmmakers Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. The story begins when Llewelyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law - in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell - can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers - in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives - the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning's headlines. |
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O JERUSALEM Director: Elie Chouraqui Website O JERUSALEM meticulously re-creates the historic struggle surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. At the center of these events are two young, American friends - one Jewish, the other Arab. The film is told from the alternating viewpoints of the Jews, Arabs and Brits, all of whom collide in their fight for the control of Jerusalem while bringing to the forefront themes of courage, terrorism, deprivation, politics and a strong sense of morality. Their involvement takes them from the streets of New York to The Holy Land, where they risk their lives – making incredible sacrifices along the way – to fight for what they believe in, as the city of their dreams teeters on the brink of destruction. |
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THE ORPHANAGE Director: Juan Antonio Bayona Website THE ORPHANAGE presented by Oscar-Nominee Guillermo del Toro, centers on a Laura (Belén Rueda from THE SEA INSIDE) who purchases her beloved childhood orphanage with dreams of restoring and reopening the long abandoned facility as a place for disabled children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her son's imagination, but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend quickly turn into something more disturbing. Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the place. |
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PERSEPOLIS
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RAILS & TIES Director: Alison Eastwood Website Megan Stark is ill and all her husband, Tom, can do is bury himself in his job as a train conductor, where at least he feels in control and everything runs on a predetermined track. Until now. Tom's train has hit a car on the tracks in a tragic turn of events that, while not his fault, may still cost him his job. Worse, a young woman is dead and her son, Davey, has been left to cope with the loss of his mother, the guilt that he could not save her not only from the train but from herself. The accident puts the Starks and Davey on their own collision course. But instead of leading to tragedy, this crossing could mean new hope for a woman who has only one chance left to fulfill her dreams, for a man who must learn to open his heart before it's too late, and for a young boy who has never known the true meaning of family. |
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RESERVATION ROAD |
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THE ROCKET
Director: Charles Binamé Website The extraordinary story of Maurice "The Rocket" Richard, whose tireless fight on and off the ice ignited – and forever changed – a generation. As a young boy from blue collar Québec, Richard had a dream to play in the National Hockey League. Beneath his soft-spoken, working class exterior burned a passion that transformed this young factory working into "The Rocket." In the 1950s pre-helmet days of hockey, facing constant discrimination, The Rocket played with finesse, speed, and the fire that defied all odds and made him a legend. |
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THE SAVAGES Director: Tamara Jenkins Website An irreverent look at life, love and mortality – through the lens of one of the most surreal experiences facing American families: when adult siblings are plucked from their everyday, ordinary, self-centered lives to care for an estranged elderly parent. There is a moment in everyone's life when childhood ends and adulthood begins, for Jon and Wendy Savage that moment is now. |
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THE SIGNAL
Director: David Bruckner, Dan Bush, Jacob Gentry Website Imagine every cell phone, radio, and television in your city suddenly broadcasting the same mysterious signal over and over. Now imagine these "terminus" transmissions evoking violent, uncontrollable, psychotic chaos from everyone who comes in contact with them. THE SIGNAL invades the minds of everyday citizens living their workaday lives and having their sordid affairs. Suddenly struck by the power of the insidious transmissions, they are compelled to kill or be killed. Complicating matters is a zombie-like resistance some characters have to the idea of remaining dead. The story violently explodes, blending bloody gore with psychological satire, for a truly original horror experience. |
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SLEUTH Director: Kenneth Branagh Website The updated story of a wealthy writer of detective stories, and an aspiring yet out-of-work actor who is having an affair with the writer's wife. The writer's exquisitely modernized Georgian manor, becomes the backdrop for a cat and mouse game that pits one creative mind against another. |
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SLIPSTREAM Director: Anthony Hopkins Website Pushing the boundaries between fiction and fantasy, SLIPSTREAM is about the implosion of a man's mind. The film unfolds in a dreamlike, non-linear, stream-of-consensus style of story telling with a surreal tale of one man's journey. Felix Bonhoeffer is an actor and screenwriter who has lived his life in two states of existence: reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder-mystery screenplay, Felix becomes baffled as his characters start appearing in his life; and his life starts slipping into his characters. |
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SMILEY FACE Director: Gregg Araki Website A slacker actress trips her way through a series of life-changing misadventures after eating a batch of marijuana-laced brownies made by her stoner roommate. |
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SOUTHLAND TALES Director: Richard Kelly Website SOUTHLAND TALES is an ensemble piece set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. The life of Boxer Santaros, an action star stricken with amnesia, intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and David Clark, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy. |
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STEEP Director: Mark Obenhaus Website STEEP is a beautiful documentary about bold adventure, exquisite athleticism and the pursuit of a perfect moment on skis. It is the story of big mountain skiing, a sport that barely existed 35 years ago. STEEP features many of the sport's greatest athletes including Bill Briggs, Stefano De Benedetti, Eric Pehota, Glen Plake, Shane McConkey, Seth Morrison, Chris Davenport, Ingrid Backstrom and Andrew McLean. |
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STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING Director: Andrew Wagner Website Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a once-famous New York writer who is both shaken and emboldened when a beautiful graduate student(Lauren Ambrose) invades his solitude to mine his life for her thesis about his novels. |
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SUMMER PALACE Director: Ye Lou Website Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom. Protests collapse, and Yu and Zhou lose each other amidst the social chaos and panicked crowds. Zhou Wei is sent to a summer military camp, and on his release moves to Berlin, fleeing both his country and memories of Yu. She finds a job, a lover, but can not forget Zhou. In Germany, social unrest is mounting: calls for freedom, demonstrations for democracy. A familiar story for Zhou. Weary, still haunted by Yu, he returns to China as the Berlin Wall crashes down. He finds her at last, in a small town. From evening to dawn, their future stretches before them, two changed souls in a changed world. |
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THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Website A sprawling epic about family, greed, corruption, and the pursuit of the American dream. Set in the booming West coast oil fields at the turn of the 20th century, THERE WILL BE BLOOD follows the rise of rugged prospector Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who becomes an independent oilman after hitting it rich with the strike of a lifetime. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film is inspired by Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" |
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VINCE VAUGHN’S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW Director: Ari Sandel Website Produced by Vince Vaughn, the film follows Vaughn as he handpicks four up-and-coming comics and then leads them on a remarkable 30-city, 30-day, 30-show tour as tour creator and emcee. The film features footage from the tour's performances, as well as behind-the-scenes and a host of surprise guests. |
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THE WALKER Director: Paul Schrader Website A contemporary drama set in Washington, D.C., THE WALKER centers around Carter Page, a well-mannered companion for some of the capitol’s leading ladies. However, Carter's loyalty is tested when his dearest friend finds herself on the brink of a scandal that could destroy her reputation and her husband’s career. Offering to cover for her, Carter suppresses incriminating evidence, only to find himself the chief suspect in a criminal investigation. Suddenly, this well-connected man-about-town is a pariah, hounded by the police and forced to find the true culprit and clear his name. More importantly, he must re-examine whether it is important to be accepted by a society based on betrayal, hypocrisy, and corruption. |
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WAR/DANCE Director: Sean Fine, Andrea Nix Fine Website Set in Northern Uganda, a country ravaged by more than two decades of civil war, WAR/DANCE tells the story of Dominic, Rose, and Nancy, three children whose families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed, and who currently reside in a displaced persons camp in Patongo. When they are invited to compete in an annual music and dance festival, their historic journey to their nation's capital is also an opportunity to regain a part of their childhood and to taste victory for the first time in their lives. |
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WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY
Director: Goran Dukic Website From the moment Zia cuts his wrists and enters a bizarre afterlife reserved for suicides, this film becomes a strangely uplifting, darkly comic tale about a journey through the hereafter. This is a world where everyone still bears the scars earned from the manner in which they "offed" while the everyday reality is a twisted mirror image of our own mortal world. When Zia begins his search for his long lost love, he encounters a variety of memorable individuals, be it a disillusioned suicide bomber or an angel in disguise. But it is in Eugene, an inscrutable Russian musician, and Mikal, an accidental tourist, that he finds his closest friends. This trio of lost souls forms an uncommon bond as they set out on a journey across the afterlife in search of what they could not find in their previous lives. |
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YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH Director: Francis Ford Coppola Website A love story wrapped in a mystery. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH stars Tim Roth as Dominic Matei, a professor whose life changes after a cataclysmic incident during the dark years prior to World War II. Becoming a fugitive, he is pursued through far-flung locations including Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India. |
