2007 Film Guide

Chamamé is a lively, often melancholy strain of music from northern Argentina that has been gaining quite an international following lately. Cosima Lange follows four exemplary interpreters--Chango Spasiuk, Gicela Méndez Ribeiro, Monchito Merlo and Alberto Bofill--into their homes, bars and the open countryside.  More...

Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, the festival from Buenos Aires' Bolivian immigrants, is a colourful celebration of song and dance. Martin Rejtman uses this as a starting point for a uniquely constructed documentary essay, a simultaneously detached and intimate communal portrait.  More...

An elderly acacia tree is the centre point of Gustavo Fontán's lyrical and poetic meditation on the circuitous nature of life and death. As the filmmaker's aging parents debate the tree's fate (it was planted in honour of a first-born child), time moves resolutely forward. A triumph of personal filmmaking.--Variety  More...

Joy Division, one of postpunk's most influential bands, was forced to regroup as New Order--thanks to the suicide of its singer/songwriter, Ian Curtis, at the age of 23. Anton Corbijn's sensational and stylish debut moves beyond the traditional biopic, and Sam Riley makes for an uncanny Curtis.  More...

Where do you draw the line between con and artist? For author Norma Khouri, who famously faked the story of an Islamic honour killing in her memoir Forbidden Love, the difference between fiction and reality is entirely negotiable, as depicted in this involvingly twisted tail of deceit and redemption.  More...

A finely chiseled drama about an unstable Chinese mother [the excellent Joan Chen] struggling to reconcile her desires with her children's needs in early 70s Australia, [sophomore director Tony Ayres' film] speaks bittersweet truths about life in the Chinese diaspora...--Variety  More...

Director Ian Darling's documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the thespian machinery of Cate Blanchett's star-turn as Hedda Gabler (Ibsen's legendary doomed heroine). As the production travels from Sydney, Australia, to Brooklyn's prestigious BAM theatre, the actors must reinterpret their roles before the curtain rises.  More...

Peter Carstairs' poignant debut feature tells the story of Ed and Paddy, two friends growing up on a farm in 1960s Australia--one is white, the other Aborigine. The burgeoning Aboriginal rights movement, along with the arrival of a girl, threaten to tear their friendship apart.  More...

The truth of Byron's famous line Til taught by pain, men really know not what good water is worth is amply demonstrated in director Udo Maurer's new documentary (co-written with Michael Glawogger). As fresh drinking water becomes increasingly precious the world over, human life hangs in the balance...  More...

Operation Bernhard--the biggest counterfeiting scheme of all time--was undertaken by the Nazis in the dying days of WWII in order to flood enemy coffers with fake currency. Stefan Ruzowitzky's deft drama tells the true story of the Jewish concentration-camp prisoner who headed the operation... and who eventually brought it down.  More...

Another unflinching and masterful exploration of miserablism from Ulrich Seidl, this time with two separate stories of protagonists who never meet: a Ukrainian nurse who leaves the post-Soviet tundra for Austria, and a Viennese lowlife whose search for employment leads him to the glum housing blocs of the East.  More...

A striking mix of docudrama and art-film techniques, Anja Salomonowitz's debut deals with the global phenomenon of trafficking in women. Using true stories, she weaves together the tales of a customs official, a villager, a brothel bartender, a diplomat and a taxi driver, all of whom may be involved.  More...