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Black Brush
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Hungary, 2005, 80 min)
The rooftops of Budapest, loitering, chimney sweeps, dope smoking, goats, and absurd humour. The first feature film by director Roland Vranik presents the unbearable lightness of being, or what the world is like in black and white through the eyes of four extremely idle slackers.
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The District!
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Hungary, 2004, 95 min)
How wonderful to escape from "Disney-land" into this wildly original animated comedy-adventure from Áron Gauder about the multicultural denizens--among them Hungarians, Gypsies, Arabs, Chinese, Americans and Germans--who live, and occasionally clash, in District 8, the most dire ghetto in Budapest. Funny, surreal, provocative and distinctly Eastern European.
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Fateless
[Feature] - Special Presentations
(Hungary, 2005, 140 min)
Adapted by Nobel laureate Imré Kertesz from his 1975 autobiographical novel, the big-budget Fateless dares to aestheticize the concentration camp experience in a more provocative, and successful, manner than Schindler’s List. Cinematographer Lajos Koltai's directorial debut follows young Gyorgy’s descent from relative affluence to hell on Earth.
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The Porcelain Doll
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Hungary, 2005, 75 min)
Three short stories of the surreal, the bizarre and the fantastical make up a Bermuda triangle of strangeness in this film from director Péter Gárdos. Are they political allegories or simply folk tales gone wild? Ultimately it doesn't really matter, as the strength of the images is entirely universal. Gárdos lived with the villagers he puts on screen and the amateur performances are equal to those of the professionals in the cast.
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 Iceland |
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Beowulf and Grendel
[Feature] - Canadian Images
(Iceland, 2005, 104 min)
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner meets Lord of the Rings in this loose adaptation by Sturla Gunnarsson (Such a Long Journey, VIFF 98) of the 9th century Anglo-Saxon poem telling the blood-soaked tale of a Norse hero's battle with a great and murderous monster.
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Dark Horse
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Iceland, 2005, 109 min)
The latest slacker comedy from Dagur Kari, director of Noi Albinoi, follows the exploits of Daniel, a graffiti artist who has withdrawn from all social conventions; his rotund buddy Grandpa, who works in a sleep clinic while training to be a soccer referee; and Franc, the bewitching bakery girl they both crave. Shot in luminous monochrome with a style--and content--recalling Godard's Masculin Feminine.
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 India |
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Amu
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(India, 2005, 102 min)
A 21-year-old second generation Indian-American woman struggles for acceptance in both countries, while discovering a long-buried family secret revolving around the riots following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination. "An extremely significant film for India... Every character richly etched... An unbelievable first film... It is truly cinema."--Shyam Benegal
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Behind the Mirror
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(India, 2005, 88 min)
A young boy and his grandmother rediscover each other in this tale of new world meets old from writer/director Rajkumar Bhan. The rapidly changing culture of India provides the backdrop for this warm and ultimately redemptive film about the power of family ties and the pull of tradition.
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Memories in the Mist
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(India, 2005, 120 min)
The master of Indian cinema Buddhadeb Dasgupta returns with this story of father and son, separated by time and space, based on his own novel America, America. As unsettling as it is lovely, this is a film filled with surreal imagery and beautifully constructed sequences that may force you to reevaluate the very idea of narrative cinema.
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 Indonesia |
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Gie
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Indonesia, 2005, 147 min)
One of the most ambitious movies ever made in Indonesia, Riri Riza’s film is drawn from the posthumous journals of Soe Hok-Gie, a Chinese-Indonesian activist who opposed the Soekarno government in the 1950s and the Soeharto dictatorship in the 1960s. Nicholas Saputra movingly plays the soulful young rebel amid a vivid evocation of the Jakarta of the period. Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.
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Of Love and Eggs
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Indonesia, 2004, 89 min)
The ever-surprising Garin Nugroho goes retro for a charming comedy-drama about a working-class Muslim community in Jakarta, shot entirely in the studio. The storylines include the struggle to acquire a cupola for the mosque, the stresses of first love and the selling of eggs. Beneath its benign surface interest in the place of Islam in the lives of believers, this is an angry anti-fundamentalist polemic.
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The Woman who is Married to a Dog
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Indonesia, 2005, 7 min)
precedes Year of Living Vicariously, The
An absurdist folk tale, inventively told in the form of a silent movie. Edwin (currently at film school in Jakarta) worked on Riri Riza’s Gie and appears in The Year of Living Vicariously discussing the story which is the basis for this short. (TR)
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 Iran |
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One Night
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Iran, 2005, 78 min)
Iran's best-known actress, Niki Karimi, makes her stunning directorial debut with a frank film that sounds positively Kiarostamian: she tells the story of a young woman's fearless journey through one long night on Teheran's mean streets, hitchhiking rides with male strangers who each seem to possess their own grave secret.
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Portrait of a Lady Far Away
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Iran, 2005, 98 min)
A random phone call from a woman planning to kill herself sends a lonely architect on a journey of self-discovery in this allusive debut feature from director Ali Mossaffa. Is this a real woman or merely a phantom from the past; the truth may be as mysterious as the midnight quest itself.
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Wake Up, Arezoo!
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Iran, 90 min)
43,000 people died on December 26, 2003 in the Iranian City of Bam. Director Kianoosh Ayyari chooses to focus on the experience of one, a teacher who stumbles out the rubble and tries to help with the rescue efforts. Shooting on the spot, with actual survivors of the quake, the film borders on the fringes of cinéma vérité, with genuine news footage of the tragedy blending seamlessly into the story.
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 Ireland |
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Omagh
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Ireland, 2004, 106 min)
Omagh is the name of a small town in Ireland where Catholics and Protestants had managed to co-exist peacefully for almost 30 years. That changed suddenly in August of 1998 when a bomb set by IRA dissidents killed 31 people. A necessary and important film from director Pete Travis. Winner of the BAFTA Award for Best Drama.
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Pavee Lackeen
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Ireland, 2005, 87 min)
The Travellers are Ireland's nomads. Like the Roma (Gypsies in Europe) they are fiercely proud and independent people. But in a world that has grown increasingly smaller, is there any room left for their traditional way of life? Perry Odgen's film follows ten-year-old Winnie and her family as they struggle to survive without compromise, treading a fine line between fiction and documentary along the way.
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 Israel |
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Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
[Feature] - Nonfiction Features of 2005
(Israel, 2005, 104 min)
By reflecting upon the resolve that must be needed in order to take one's own life rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, the inimitable Avi Mograbi draws lines between the founding myths of the Israeli state (Masada, Samson, the Holocaust) and the current plight of the Palestinians. Smart, personal/political filmmaking of the highest order.
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Live and Become
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Israel, 2005, 140 min)
Winner of an audience award in Berlin, this gentle film from director Radu Mihaileanu tells the story of Shlomo, a nine-year-old Ethiopian boy sent to Israel. Neither a Jew nor an orphan, Shlomo is forced to adopt an entirely new identity in order to escape starvation and gain a new life. Seen through the eyes of a child, this is a quiet meditation on identity and politics with an ultimately humanist stance.
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 Italy |
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Caché
[Feature] - Special Presentations
(Italy, 2005, 111 min)
Again filming in France, Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, The Time of the Wolf) turns to the thriller genre to critique First World complacency. Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil star as a bourgeois couple who start receiving ominous videotapes on their doorstep, including tapes of themselves... A gripping, tension-filled winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes.
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Changing Destiny
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Italy, 2004, 110 min)
Winner of a prestigious Tiger award at Rotterdam earlier this year, Daniele Gaglianone's coming-of-age tale tells of two young Italian lads trying to escape the soulless decay of their post-industrial city. Gaglianone directs with panache, giving the sometimes-bleak vistas an aching beauty.
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First Love
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Italy, 2004, 100 min)
"Don't eat!," Vittorio screams at his new girlfriend, Sonia. He's a young goldsmith on a quest for the ideal girlfriend and she may be the one, if only she can lose one quarter of her body mass. An examination of the weighty issues of love and control, director Matteo Garrone's film is an unblinking look at the ugly underbelly inherent in the pursuit of perfection.
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The Grönholm Method
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Italy, 2005, 115 min)
A tale of excutive überdogs from director Marcelo Piñeyro (Kamchatka, VIFF 03) that possesses a truly savage bite. A group of masters of the universe corporate types are assembled to compete for one position using something called the Grönholm method, an system meant to separate the weak from the strong. But the weak may be more wily than they appear...
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Hell
[Feature] - Spotlight on France
(Italy, 2005, 98 min)
Danis Tanovic, the director of No Man's Land, returns with this gripping story chronicling the lives of three sisters, bound forever by an act of violence that they witnessed in their childhood. Starring Emmanuelle Béart, the film was written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz, who developed this film as part of a trilogy with the late Krzysztof Kieslowski.
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A Particular Silence
[Feature] - Nonfiction Features of 2005
(Italy, 2005, 75 min)
Matteo is 24 years old and suffering from a profound form of autism. This highly personal documentary from screenwriter Stefano Rulli (The Best of Youth) is a searing portrait of one family coping, or not, with a difficult and mysterious condition. Rulli was prompted by Matteo's condition to open "The City of the Sun," a special retreat for families struggling with the developmentally challenged.
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Rome, Open City
[Feature] - Vancouver Int'l Film Centre
(Italy, 1945, 100 min)
plays with My Dad Is 100 Years Old
Roberto Rossellini's neo-realist classic still thrums with energy and immediacy, despite its having been released 60 years ago. It is Rome, 1944, and the Nazis are closing in on Italian resistance leaders... Anna Magnani is outstanding as one of the few trained actors in a cast of non-professionals.
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Stolen Childhood
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Italy, 2005, 85 min)
Rosario is a young orphan on the mean streets of Naples. Drinking, smoking and working for local crime bosses, the only sign that Rosario has retained any innocence is his love for his senile grandmother... Following in the tradition of Pixote, the Frazzi brothers have created a singular portrayal of innocence lost. "The film revelation of the year."--La Republica
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Through the Eyes of the Other
[Feature] - Cinema of Our Time
(Italy, 2004, 105 min)
In Gianpaolo Tescari's film, the "other" is a Kurdish refugee taken into the home of a wealthy physicist and his choreographer wife. Before long this educated and liberal couple have succumbed to the more bestial forces of jealousy, racial hatred and xenophobia. The film caused an eruption of controversy when it screened at the Taormina Film Festival.
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 Japan |
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Bambi ♥ Bone
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 78 min)
plays with Mother’s Mother and also her Mother, and her Daughter
Young Tada, sexually abused by his own father, forms a friendship with Aya, a girl whose promiscuous mother often throws her out. Woman director Shibutani Noriko’s debut feature is not so much an account of pedophilia and child abuse as a celebration of the resilience and creative energies of kids. Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee. With Setoguchi Miki’s Mother’s Mother and also her Mother, and her Daughter (Japan, 11 mins), in which a young woman explores her love/hate feelings for her late mother. Grand Prix winner at 2005 Image Forum Festival in Tokyo.
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Bashing
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 82 min)
Directly inspired by the cases of Japanese volunteer workers in Iraq who were taken hostage and freed--only to find themselves ostracized and blamed back home in Japan for their "reckless, selfish behaviour." Kobayashi Masahiro’s film centres on Yuko, a young woman who finds her community, her ex-boyfriend and finally even her father and stepmother turning against her.
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Black Sun
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 10 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
Superb photo-realist animation in the spirit of Weegee photographs. A vision of hell on the lowest rungs of Tokyo society.
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Consultation Room
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 9 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
Body-horror as David Cronenberg has never dreamed of it: fears of infection blur with childhood memories to produce a genuinely disturbing vision.
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Day of Nose
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 8 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
A line-animation film about the day the men had their noses inspected, which triggered some surprising fantasies...
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Goodbye Song
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 4 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
Young children name their favourite things. Over a photographic image of a park and slide, they’re brought to animated life. But things finally take an unexpected turn.
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Haze
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 25 min)
plays in Digital Shorts by Three Filmmakers 2005
Tsukamoto (whose lengthy filmography starts with Tetsuo and stretches to last year’s Vital) offers a visceral, Cube-like puzzle: a man wakes in a narrow space between two spiked walls and tries desperately to escape. Rationally inexplicable (at least, until its closing moments), but agonizingly gripping.
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Heart, Beating in the Dark (1982)
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 1982, 75 min)
plays with London Calling
A milestone in Japanese indie film history, Nagasaki Shunichi’s outlaw classic stars Muroi Shigeru and Naito Takashi as a young couple on the run, holing up for the night in a borrowed room. Between episodes of rough sex their terrible secret is revealed in flashbacks--in which, amazingly, they switch genders and roles. With London Calling (Japan, 15 mins), in which Nagasaki has ulterior motives for visiting the London Film Festival.
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Heart, Beating in the Dark (2005)
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 104 min)
Nagasaki Shunichi’s superb new film has a complex relationship with his original classic from 1982: it’s part remake, part sequel and part rethink. Muroi Shigeru and Naito Takashi return as Inako and Ringo, older and maybe wiser, while a new young couple go on the run. Nagasaki asks which are more delinquent: the kids or the grown-ups? World Premiere.
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Kiss Me, Please!
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 15 min)
precedes Masseur, The
Tamano’s latest disturbingly comic short is about a lonely young man living in an inaccessible room. The giant radish he’s just bought won’t fit in his fridge. Fortunately, his fishing rods all have catches: he reels in three men (actually two men and one drag queen) from the sky...
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Linda Linda Linda
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 114 min)
Yamashita Nobuhiro (director of slacker-comedy classics Hazy Life and No-one’s Ark) reinvents the high-school movie with the tale of an all-girl rock band trying to compete for a music prize with several handicaps--including a non-Japanese speaking Korean vocalist (the incomparable Bae Du-Na, from Barking Dogs Never Bite). Riotously enjoyable.
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London Calling
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 1985, 13 min)
precedes Heart, Beating in the Dark (1982)
A film director named Nagasaki Shunichi comes to the UK for the screening of his film Heart, Beating in the Dark at the London Film Festival. While in town, he tries to track down a former girlfriend with whom he has lost contact. His efforts seem fruitless, and he finds himself musing on notions of memory, place and loss...
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Mother’s Mother and also her Mother, and her Daughter
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 11 min)
precedes Bambi ♥ Bone
Setoguchi’s sometimes shocking and disturbing film centres on her love-hate relationship with her late mother. The soundtrack collage includes her voice-over confessions and snatches from her grandmother’s reminiscences; the image track features "meat dolls" and other displaced foodstuffs which she symbolically curses and destroys. Grand Prix, 2005 Image Forum Festival in Tokyo. (TR)
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Princess Raccoon
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 111 min)
Remember our pioneering tribute to Suzuki Seijun back in 1991? Well, the grand old man is still at it, and here finally delivers his long-promised musical, starring (who else?) Odagiri Joe from Bright Future and China’s newest diva Zhang Ziyi. The story is a legend: an abandoned son meets a beautiful woman who is actually a raccoon spirit in human guise. The music ranges from schmalz to hip-hop; the visuals, of course, are out of this world.
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Silver Birch
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 6 min)
precedes So Much Rice
A simple riddle: what looks just like the trunk of a silver birch?
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Slide 002
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 5 min)
precedes So Much Rice
Hirata was VIFF’s guest last year with his previous short The Trains, and he shot this footage during his visit. Vancouver as you’ve never seen it before!
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Takeshis'
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 108 min)
The new Kitano film is his most intriguing and innovative in some while. 'Beat' Takeshi is a busy and successful TV star, while his forlorn lookalike Mr. Kitano never gets the showbiz break he's longing for. Around them, other people also seem to have doubles/triples or even quadruples, as the world fragments in a kaleidoscope of alternate realities, alternate possibilities or maybe just random daydreams and nightmares. The mood swings from wild comedy to rueful self-appraisal.
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Trilogy About Clouds
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 14 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
As the title promises, it’s in three parts. Breathing Cloud looks for the water vapour in the act of love. Looking at a Cloud is a classroom fantasy: perhaps an homage to the B-movie classic The Blob. And From the Cloud challenges our basis as carbon-based life-forms.
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Trip
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 8 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
The latest product of the unique long-distance collaboration between two famous graphic artists. A psychedelic journey.
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Two Trips and Coffee
[Short] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2005, 17 min)
plays in Alternative Anime Strikes Back
The first trip is (mostly) live-action: a vision of the city inhabited by ghosts, who are doing themselves no favours by attacking monsters from their ids. The second trip is animated: a journey to the village where words are manufactured. The protagonists of the two trips finally meet over coffee.
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The Volatile Woman
[Feature] - Dragons and Tigers
(Japan, 2004, 80 min)
The best film yet from Osaka-based indie Kumakiri Kazuyoshi (director of the notorious Kichiku), this is an extremely offbeat romance. Youngish widow Etsuko runs a gas station on her own and gets into a possessive relationship with a guy who comes in to rob her till. He reminds her of her late husband. But she has a rival for his affections, and the police are closing in...
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War Hospital
[Feature] - Canadian Images
(Japan, 2004, 90 min)
Chronicling life, birth and death in the Red Cross medical mission in northern Kenya, David Christensen and Damien Lewis introduce us to both those who work to heal the injured, and some of the many civilians who arrive in Kenya for care.
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Event Information |
