2007 Film Guide

Kim Jongguk’s debut feature comprises one hour-long take: there are tensions when a young man and his wife meet an old friend outside Seoul Station during a farmers’ demonstration... because the two men used to be lovers. Dragons & Tigers Award nominee. more...

A progenitor of Congolese rumba,“Papa Wendo” Kolosoy had his first hit record more than 60 years ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Jacques Sarasin’s remarkable documentary juxtaposes “Papa’s” life and music with a trenchant account of the tragedies that have befallen Kolosoy’s country. more...

The discovery of 100 precious manuscripts nailed (Christ-like) to a library floor is only the beginning in Ermanno Olmi's (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) final narrative feature. One part religious thriller to two parts philosophical inquiry, Olmi's intense drama charts the spiritual awakening of one man with grace and intelligence. more...

Digitally manipulated film and video recreate alternative histories of Hong Kong and two of its citizens. An “experimental documentary” shouldn’t be such a pleasure to watch. But Anson Mak’s new essay film is by turns funny, bristlingly intellectual, playful, lyrical, formally challenging and beautifully textured. more...

Benoît Rossel's beautifully constructed documentary provides a revelatory look into the inner workings (quite literally) of the operating room. The different aspects of the surgeon's art (from the mechanical to the philosophical) are examined with depth and insight through the initiation rites of an apprentice surgeon. more...

What do you get when you mix a young Iraqi film student, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, actor/director Liev Schreiber and a documentarian who finds herself becoming part of her own story? Misguided altruism and genuine humanity collide to incendiary effect in director Nina Davenport's revelatory film. more...

A stolen election, a poisoned candidate and a fragile democracy--the 2004 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine had all the elements of a Hollywood thriller, except it was entirely real. Filmmaker Damian Kolody found himself in the middle of it all while working as a volunteer International Election Observer. more...

No film this year has a sharper take on urban China than this witty comedy cum environmental parable. Ling Yiban's tale of a female law clerk in Sichuan, her goofy clients and slacker boyfriend, captures the urban glitz of China in all its energetically tacky glory. more...

On a moonlit street corner, a Parisian waif sits dejectedly on a doorstep, mournfully clutching a dogless leash. The poodle bites. The poodle chews. more...

Jia Zhangke’s latest short spans ten years: a lonely woman and a photographer meet every couple of years on a train, and their virtually wordless bond expresses a world of feelings. more...

Harald Friedl’s sad and thoughtful documentary shows us an old and cherished way of life that is dying out. With genuine poetic sympathy, he follows the fortunes of four shops and their elderly, retiring proprietors--a butcher, a pharmacist, a leatherware purveyor and a button seller--and shows the effects of big business on small. more...

When a novelty company's entire staff is outsourced to India, the one remaining employee must travel to Mumbai to train his replacement. Love meets globalization in John Jeffcoat's sparkling debut feature. Winner of the Golden Space Needle for audience favourite at the Seattle International Film Festival. more...