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In a city of love and prosperity, a city of lost hope and premature death, veteran detective Hei feels it all: the hurt, the helplessness, the horror. When his father-in-law, the billionaire benefactor Kim, is gruesomely murdered in his palatial mansion, he enlists the assistance of his former partner turned private detective.
When big news comes in for the constant bachelor Shawn, he makes it a mission to visit everyone who has shunned him for years. This includes his old friend Greg – a children’s musician living in the cozy, domestic confines of Brooklyn. After the two old friends hit some hilarious re-acquainting pains, they soon hit the American road for a trip that will show them the gifts and the costs of real friendship.
On the morning of June 18. 1954, the US CIA dropped leaflets in Guatemala City demanding the resignation of the president. Guatemala was ravaged by Civil War for the next 36 years. But hope is rising. In the midst of incredible odds, victims have been transformed into champions who willfully embrace the pain of their past to help repair the next generation. This is their story. Shorty – a former gang member who is now a pastor, and Tita – a woman who started a school in Guatemala’s most notorious slum have joined forces to repair La Limonada.
After a painful journey through Europe, Aleksei, a Belarusian, joins the Foreign Legion in France and clings to a confused hope of a European identity. Jomo, a Nigerian, fights for the survival and durability of his people in the Niger Delta and is ready to die to defend his ideas. These two young people who are sacrificed and smashed together will, against all odds, meet and their destinies will merge to continue across borders, bodies, life and death…
In EVOLUTION, acclaimed filmmaking team Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber (PIECES OF A WOMAN) return with a powerful drama tracing three generations of a family, from a surreal memory of World War II to modern day Berlin, unable to process their past in a society still coping with the wounds of its history. Like the water that connects the episodes in this triptych, memory and identity are fluid, and how we relate to it can drown or buoy. The pain and stigma that trickles from Eva, to Lena and then Jonas is inexpressible, yet rendered with striking imagery by Mundruczó and a wrenchingly poignant yet acerbically ironic and personal script by Weber. While generational traumas find new expression in the present, the family in EVOLUTION looks towards a more hopeful future
For more than 100 years, the Statue of Liberty has been a symbol of hope and refuge for generations of immigrants. In this lyrical, compelling and provocative portrait of the statue, Ken Burns explores both the history of America’s premier symbol and the meaning of liberty itself. Featuring rare archival photographs, paintings and drawings, readings from actual diaries, letters and newspapers of the day, the fascinating story of this universally admired monument is told. In interviews with Americans from all walks of life, including former New York governor Mario Cuomo, the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan and the late writers James Baldwin and Jerzy Kosinski, The Statue of Liberty examines the nature of liberty and the significance of the statue to American life. Nominated for both the Academy Award ® and the Emmy Award ®, The Statue of Liberty received the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle, the Christopher Award and the Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival.
Marisol is the national rhythmic gymnastics coach, methodical, demanding and authoritative. The World Championship is approaching and she places all her gold medal hopes on Angelica, the team’s most promising newcomer. Two weeks before the final, Marisol discovers that her husband is having an affair with a much younger woman with whom she is expecting a child. Marisol does not contemplate failure, so she embarks on a desperate race to win him back, without taking into account her motives and feelings. Her pain is transferred to her tatami, where she becomes even more implacable towards Angelica, in whom she places her hopes of success. At this point, winning gold is all that’s left for him.
Natalia and Carlos, both aged 20, are in love and struggling to survive in today’s Spain. Their limited resources prevent them from getting ahead as they’d like to. They have no great ambitions because they have no great hopes. To earn some money, they decide to shoot an amateur porno film. The birth of their daughter Julia is the main catalyst for the changes they make.
Duke Philippe de Nevers is an influential and popular man who is married to a beautiful wife called Aurore. His rival Philippe de Gonzague hates him enough to organise an attempt on him. The Duke is accompagnied by Henri de Lagardère when de Gonzague’s henchmen altogether attack him. Lagardère cannot save his friend because the both of them are hopelessly outnumbered. He has to escape in order to save the Duke’s daughter and swears revenge. Together with his old buddy Passepoil he raises the little girl in Spain. At the same time he returns frequently to France where he detects confronts his friend’s murderers and puts them to the sword one by one until only their former leader is left. Finally he discovers that Philippe de Gonzague is the man for whom he is looking.
Anja and five friends join anthroplogy student, Dace, on a journey to study a remote, ancient rock painting. Their excitement vanishes when Mel becomes delirious after skinny-dipping in the waterhole. Feverish, bleeding, confused, she physically and mentally regresses to a vicious predatory state. Mel has gone primal. Mel’s lover and friends realise they are the prey as she savagely hunts them down. Before they can escape another one of them starts to regress, posing a hideous choice; kill their friends or be killed by them. Their only hope of survival is through a cave, where Anja learns too late the meaning of the ancient rock art they came to study.
“Boy from the Blaze” is the survivor of a tragic accident that destroyed his life and that of his family. About to turn 18, without a job or an education, he spends his days in the darkness of his room. Consumed by pain and anger, his only hope is writing songs for an imaginary crowd. Inspired by a friend and encouraged by his mother, he will find the strength to go on stage and overcome his fears.
Spain, 1982. Andrés Expósito, a young police inspector, accepts a posting in Denia, a small town on the Mediterranean coast, in the hope of leading a quieter life and that the natural environment will help improve the fragile health of his daughter; but once in his new post he becomes involved by chance in the investigation of the strange death of the inspector he has come to replace.
It’s summer and France is hit by a polar cold. Ten lone and lost souls find each other, a profound meeting as a last chance to hope and fear, to love and dream. Ten tales as tribute to Monet’s Water Lilies, ten tales portraying an impressionist painting of today’s France.
Isabella is a disconnected and angry young woman. Her life was shattered at 13 when her Italian mother died of cancer. Her successful British father Frank, who harbors a painful secret, chose to lose himself with work and outsource Isabella’s care and upbringing to nanny’s, tutors and eventually therapists. Many years later Frank had remarried to a wonderful Italian woman, Claudia, who manages to convince Frank that they all need to get away from work, from the city, from internet and spend a month close to nature on a remote Italian country estate and hopefully reconnect to each other.
A docu-film that traces the victorious ride of Mancini’s Azzurri, from the debut match to the final against England. A troupe lived with the Azzurri for a month, to bring the spectators into the lives of the players and all the members of the staff, between training sessions, matches, travels and celebrations. An adventure told through the voices of the protagonists, who confided dreams, joys, pains and hopes to the cameras. “Blue Dream, the road to Wembley” is the completion of a project started a year ago together with the FIGC, to tell the national team’s approach to the European Championships through the 4 episodes aired in the days immediately preceding the European Championship, bringing the new television language of the docu-series to one of the most important time slots of the first generalist network. “Blue Dream, the road to Wembley” is a project of the New Formats Development Department
Dennis Hopper is a hard-drinking truck driver who loses control of his truck under the influence and slams it into a busload of screaming children. After serving his five year jail sentence, Hopper finds his daughter, Cebe (Linda Manz), the love of his live, grown into a rebellious punk in a backwater town, having barely been looked after by her junkie mon (Sharron Farrell). Cebe’s hopes of once again becoming a “normal” family painfully proves to be doomed, as she desperately tries to hold everyone together. Hopper’s loose, naturalistic style and sympathetic, yet critical attitude infuses the drama with a painful power that finally erupts in a devastating and thrillling conclusion.
Hardflip follows the story of Caleb (Randy Wayne) a young skater whose ill mother (Rosanna Arquette) and absent father (John Schneider) leave him reaching for the only hope he has…becoming a sponsored skater. After his mother falls ill, Caleb finds a stack of old love letters. He sets out to find the father he never knew and inadvertently begins a journey he never could have expected. This story explores what happens when we let go of our anger and pain and forgive those who have hurt us most.
In a small town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, 14-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has ever seen. His older brother has gone to war, leaving Homer to look after his widowed mother, his older sister and his 4-year-old brother, Ulysses. And so it is that as spring turns to summer, 1942, Homer Macauley delivers messages of love, hope, pain… and death… to the good people of Ithaca. And Homer Macauley will grapple with one message that will change him forever – from a boy into a man. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan’s 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, ITHACA is the quintessential wartime tale of the Home Front. It is a coming-of-age story about the exuberance of youth, the sweetness of life, the sting of death and the modesty and sheer goodness that lives in each and every one of us.
The Paradise Suite is a story about six people finding each other and, sometimes with just one glance, influencing each other’s lives irreversibly. For the beautiful young Bulgarian Jenya, her journey to Amsterdam turns out to be the opposite of what she hoped for. Her grueling captivity forces the angelic African, Yaya, to fight for her freedom – a dangerous fight in which he loses everything but his beloved faith. The Serbian war criminal Ivica, who has just become a father, is painfully confronted with the fact that crimes will never go unpunished. Bosnian Seka has nothing left to live for except her vengeance but as it turns out, it’s that same vengeance that brings love back in her life. And when the Swedish piano-wonder boy, Lukas, runs away from his new temporary home, his father Stig finally realizes that their mutual passion for music damages their relationship.
With nothing but partying and music on his mind, Jake is forced to take a hard look at himself and the ashes around him after life and his singing career slowly falls apart. Jake’s old flame, BECCA, suddenly reappears back in his life after seeing her again at a local music show. Good girl Becca, never forgetting who Jake is, makes him work for it only to fall for him again. His mother, MIA, harbors a painful secret- the father Jake thought was dead is alive. To protect Jake from the pain of knowing what his father, BO, had become after a horrible accident, Mia thought it best if Jake believed BO was dead. Jake eventually has a -random- encounter with BO on the street in a Nashville suburb that sets off a chain of events to bring Bo back into his life and hopefully reconciliation to the family.
Jin Ying is currently experiencing two of life’s most depressing moments: She is jilted by her fiancé, and her loving grandmother passes away. Heartbroken, she decides to visit the European city of Prague, and hopes to use the time to heal her inner pain. While in Prague, she meets a young Chinese man named Punk. There, she slowly unravels a secret romance her grandmother once experienced long ago.
Five young people wake up dead. Washed up by the tide they scramble to an abandoned beach house, soon realizing that the perpetual night and blasts of pain suggest this is some version of hell. Between in-fighting and attacks by a demonic shadow creature, they recall the collapse of the nightclub that brought them here – and begin seeing hope of a second chance in the cabin’s two mysterious paintings…
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portugese aggressors.
Cain is a military scientist, bitterly disappointed in human race. His conclusion is that the mankind failed to create a world worth living in. Only a small minority of privileged people live in prosperity, while the rest are spending their lives in pain and hopeless struggle to survive. One day, Cain made a decision to wipe out the entire human race from planet Earth, by activating the weapons of mass destruction. Time has passed, and Cain is coming out of the shelter to find the place where he will die. The place where the last man will die. Suddenly, he’s starting to receive a mysterious signal that indicates someone else’s presence. So, he goes in search to eliminate the survivor and complete what he has started…
Love can be painful. Very painful. The intriguing-on-the-outside, twisted-and-tortured-on-the-inside Tara sets her sights on the unassuming guy-next-door Ray. Their innocent flirting turns into a regretful one night stand which he hopes to put behind him. Tara has different plans for their relationship.
Neil is a painter and graphic designer. On a morning just like any other morning his girlfriend Amanda leaves him and moves out of their house (don’t worry, it’s a rental.) That morning Neil tries to cope as best he knows how, but in a strange turn of events he ends up shooting back a glass of bleach. He wakes up to suicide watch and court appointed therapy as well as the empty void Amanda left. Now Neil has to decide what he can do to feel better about himself. Should he get Amanda back? Make his old friends like him again? Confront his estranged father? Eat a ton of Chinese food? Or maybe he should just finish his latest goddamned painting. Will he figure it out? Well you better hope so.
Suffocated by a cruel, inescapable siege imposed by the Syrian regime and after five months of incessant and senseless shelling, a group of children living in Aleppo start painting the walls of their city. It is an act of protest as well as resistance: a small act that dares to dream of bringing back life in a place that has been humiliated by bombs and bullets, while international powers were watching without doing anything to save lives. Thus, the colours sowed throughout the devastated city sprout small beacons of hope for the thousands of people trapped in Aleppo, smothered by the ruins and rubbles. So, while the Russian forces cut off supplies of food and medicine, more than 280,000 civilians languishing without a home or a shelter try to find new hope and reasons to go on. What happened in Aleppo will never be forgotten.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has endured 20 years of devastating violence. Rape has been used as a weapon of war to destroy community and access precious minerals. Congo is often referred to as “the worst place in the world to be a woman.” CITY OF JOY tells a different story of the region. The film focuses on Jane, a student at a center where women who have suffered unimaginable abuse join together to become leaders. We also meet the founders of the center: a devout Congolese Doctor (Dr Denis Mukwege, 2016 Nobel Peace Prize nominee) a Congolese activist (Christine Schuler-Deschryver) and a radical N.Y. playwright (Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues). The film weaves between joy and pain as these individuals band together to demand hope in a place so often deemed hopeless.
FEMALE PERVERT is a provocative sex comedy by Atlanta based female writer/director Jiyoung Lee (Moral Sleaze, 2013), premiering at Slamdance this year. Actress Jennifer Kim (Mozart In The Jungle) shines as the titular star, a painfully awkward, sex obsessed video game designer who meets a series of men in hopes of sparking a love connection, and follows a twisted path to self-empowerment. The film has a truly absurd, original vision and impeccable comic timing. (more info on the film below).
The remaining tenants of a rundown poverty-row apartment building, one day away from demolition, suddenly find themselves under siege by a cannibal cult that has been terrorizing the city and their preacher like female leader known only as “The Woman”. Why this preacher has picked them as her latest victims is unknown, but her plan for them is clear – they WILL know pain, they WILL know fear, and they WILL know suffering before she kills each and every one of them. With all their connections to the outside world severed, the tenants can only do their best to holdout before they are hunted down… and consumed. Then hope seems to arrive in the form of a second woman… but is this “Girl” there to save them, or does she have her own agenda with the cult… and specifically “The Woman”? And how has she come about these special powers to aid her in her thirst for revenge? She’s coming. And vengeance will be upon them. – Written by Ron Bonk
No emotion. No fear. No pain. They were the perfect soldiers to protect civilization until the drone police became the perfect enemy. With little hope left for mankind, Tallis, an electronically enhanced soldier, rescues a survivor from a failed resistance mission. She will have to learn to fight and think like a machine for the final battle to save the human race.
“Made In Romania” is the story of a producer who is given the chance to realize his dream project; to film an adaptation of an obscure, beautifully written Victorian novel, “The Tides of Reason”. Disillusioned after years of making low budget genre films, the producer readily accepts the demands of his less than legitimate financiers. Namely, the production be filmed entirely in Romania to take advantage of a complicated and slightly suspicious tax deal. Shot in documentary style, this behind-the-scenes comedy deftly and inexorably exposes the painful reality of runaway film production. Way off the radar in deepest, darkest, rural Romania the hopelessly disconnected production veers swiftly off the tracks as bizarre personalities, cultural, economic and language issues quickly combine to send the production spiraling into hysteria. Written by Neil Monaghan
This fascinating documentary is based around the Japanese wrestling organisation Gaea’s rural training camp, and traces, in the main, the careers of four hopefuls. In charge are two magnificent specimens, the butch champion Chigusa Nagaya, still venting her hurt at the hands of her army father as she tries to whip her surrogate daughters through the pain and commitment barriers; and her sophisticated and slightly menacing Chairman. It’s a gruelling, physical film, as you would expect, but the makers don’t make heavy weather of it. And it certainly disposes of any idea that the game is faked.
A Refugee’s escape, a prisoner’s promise and a daughter’s painful secret converge in this inspiring real life story of hope.
As three fathers fight to save their families, their lives become interwined in an unlikely journey across the globe, where they learn the healing power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
