Foreign Language Films

Mariana Rondón’s BAD HAIR, will open in the US beginning Wednesday, November 19. In the film, a nine-year-old boy’s preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother.  BAD HAIR will have a 2-week engagement, November 19 – December 2, in New York City at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street (West of 6th Avenue), with screenings daily at 12:45, 3:00, 5:10, 7:20, and 9:30. A Cinema Tropical/FiGa Films release.

Writer-director Mariana Rondón grounds her film in the cultural realities of working-class Venezuela – and, by dint of two remarkable performances, finds warmth and humor between mother and son, even as the uncertainties of pre-adolescence threaten to pull them apart. Samuel Lange as the mischievous, incipiently stylish Junior is a wonder to behold: whether arguing with adults, hanging out with his chubby gal-pal, or admiring his newly straightened hair. The rest of the cast exude believability as well as poignancy, emotional depth, and joie de vivre. Winner, Best Film, San Sebastian Film Festival, and winner of more than a dozen directing, acting, and screenwriting awards at festivals throughout the world.

http://youtu.be/uW0o1jz5d9Y

BAD HAIR (2013, 93 minutes) Written and Directed by Mariana Rondón. Produced by Marité Ugás. Cinematography: Micaela Cajahuaringa. Editor: Marité Ugás. Music: Camilo Froideval. Cast: Samuel Lange (Junior), Samantha Castillo (Marta, his mother), Nelly Ramos (Carmen, his paternal grandmother), Maria Emilia Sulbaran (his friend). Venezuela/Peru/Germany. In Spanish with English subtitles. Released by Cinema Tropical and FiGa Films.

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Mardan

Check out the trailer for Batin Ghobadi’s debut feature Mardan, also Iran’s official entry for Oscar for foreign film for the upcoming Academy Awards. The film, which premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, follows a police officer gripped by a traumatic childhood memory as he searches for a missing man in the rugged mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Mardan stars Hossein Hassan, Helan Abdullah, Ismail Zagros and Feyyaz Duman. The film is produced by Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, 2000), the older brother of Batin.

A police officer finds himself haunted by a traumatic childhood memory as he searches for a missing man in the rugged mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, in this striking feature debut by Batin Ghobadi.

Kurdistan is much in the news these days, and over the years the Festival has been proud to showcase the work of two of its most distinctive filmmakers, Bahman Ghobadi and Hiner Saleem. Now, Ghobadi’s brother, Batin, has emerged with a highly enigmatic and startling first feature film.

Placing his narrative in the stunning, rugged and wild mountainous landscapes of Iraqi Kurdistan, the younger Ghobadi tells the story of a police officer, Mardan, who is haunted by a disturbing childhood memory.

Mardan is a serious, brooding officer who is called into action to investigate the disappearance of a young man. The man’s wife is extremely worried that foul play may be involved, as he was carrying a lot of cash, so Mardan sets out with the woman and her young boy to try to solve the mystery.

But, like Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Mardan is far more than an ordinary police procedural; it features a trip through a man’s mind as well as a journey through the haunting terrain. Both movies, too, are suffused with the sense of an obscure past that gradually, over the course of the film, reveals its true face.

Mardan is not only one of the most remarkably shot and composed films of the year, but also one of the most shadowy and sublime. Stalking the Kurdish countryside, trying to solve the case of the missing man, Mardan finds himself revisiting his own personal history.

Ghobadi understands that, while present-day Kurdistan may be the most stable it has been in decades, the past — a violent one, at that — still lingers around the edges of everything. Toronto International Film Festival

http://youtu.be/UuEUamfpYb8

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Volker Schlöndorff’s DIPLOMACY, starring “two of France’s greatest actors,” Niels Arestrup and André Dussollier, will open at the Film Forum in New York on Wednesday, October 15, and at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on November 7. A national release will follow.  

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. Nothing should be left as a reminder of the city’s former glory. However, at dawn on 25 August, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan .

In this riveting adaptation of the stage success by Cyril Gély, the great Volker Schlöndorff (Academy Award winner THE TIN DRUM) has created a psychologically elaborate game of political manners between two highly contrasting characters. While Choltitz entrenches himself behind his duty to obey unquestioningly all military orders, Nordling tries everything he can to appeal to reason and humanity and prevent the senseless destruction of the beloved ‘City of Light.’

http://youtu.be/Y6y5DiGBQdQ

Photo credits: Niels Arestrup as General Dietrich von Choltitz and André Dussollier as Consul Raoul Nordling in DIPLOMACY. A film by Volker Schlöndorff. A Zeitgeist Films release.
Photo: Jérôme Prébois

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The first trailer has been released for Scottnes Smith’s Hear Me Move which premiered last month at South Africa’s Durban International Film Festival. Described as the first ever dance film from South Africa, Hear Me Move features energetic “sbujwa” and “pantsula” dance sequences, choreographed by the award-winning Paul Modjadji, that play out against the backdrop of a gritty urban Johannesburg seldom seen on the silver screen. Smith says, “We opted to focus on sbujwa and pantsula, our home grown urban street dances, because we wanted South Africans to see themselves and be proud of their contemporary culture.”

The film tells the story of  Muzi (played by newcomer Nyaniso Dzedeze), a mild mannered accounting student at a Johannesburg college and the son of a legendary township pantsula dancer. When tragedy struck at a street dance and his father was murdered, young Muzi promised his mother to give up dancing. What Muzi doesn’t know is that his father’s death was not as everyone believed it to be. When his father’s former dance partner, Shoes, approaches Muzi to join his crew, “Sbujwa Nation”, Muzi has to choose between finding out the truth about his father’s death or disappointing his mother.  What he doesn’t realize is that by joining “Sbujwa Nation”, he will make himself mortal enemies with Prince, the former leader of “Sbujwa Nation” and head of rival dance crew “Ambi$hN”.

The film features a host of well-loved South African actors such as S’thandiwe Kgoroge as Muzi’s mother, Makhaola Ndebele as Shoes and Lillian Dube as Muzi’s grandmother. Alfred Ntombela, Khanyi Mbau, Lorcia Cooper, Boity Thulo, Thembi Seete, Wandile Molebatsi, Amanda Du Pont and radio DJ Khutso Theledi also make cameo appearances.

http://youtu.be/tthPtlLSjvk

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Check out the trailer for Mohamed Khan’s FACTORY GIRL which premiered last year at the 2013 Dubai International Film Festival, winning two awards, the Muhr Arab Feature Best Actress Award,  for Yasmine Raess, and the FEPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Best Arab Feature award. Factory Girl was written by the director’s wife Wessam Soliman,  The film tells the story of one year in the life of Hiyam (played by Yasmine Raees), a young woman working in a clothing factory who falls in love with her supervisor.

Hiyam, a young factory worker, lives in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood, along with her co-workers. She is clearly under the spell of Salah, the factory’s new supervisor, who has expressed his admiration for her. She believes love can transcend the class differences between them. However, when a pregnancy test is discovered in the factory premises, her immediate family and close friends accuse her of sinning. Hiyam decides not to defend herself and pays an enormous price in a society that fails to accept independent women. FACTORY GIRL examines the changes that take place in her life over the four seasons of the year. From falling in love to facing heartbreak, her life comes around a full circle by the end of the year. DIFF

http://youtu.be/yC5XwpFQoLM

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Shout! Factory,and Cinevox, have entered a picture deal to distribute BRAZILIAN WESTERN (FAROESTE CABOCLO) in both U.S and Canada. Produced and directed by René Sampaio, this crime action-drama premiered with critical praise at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and recently played at the Miami International Film Festival.

A film by René Sampaio, BRAZILIAN WESTERN is a film adaptation of the popular song “Faroeste Caboclo” by Brazilian music icon Renato Russo and tells the story of love, blood and revenge. João de Santo Cristo, a young man who leaves his life of poverty in the backlands of the state of Bahia to try his luck in Brasilia. With the help of his cousin Pablo, he becomes a carpenter’s apprentice but also gets involved in drug trafficking. 

One day, he happens to meet the beautiful Maria Lúcia, the daughter of a senator. They begin a relationship, but João plunges deeper and deeper into a downward spiral of crime and violence. He finally meets his greatest enemy, the playboy drug dealer Jeremias, his rival in business and for the heart of Maria Lúcia.

Directed by René Sampaio and produced by Bianca De Felippes, Marcello Ludwig Maia and René Sampaio, the film boasts and impressive cast of Fabrício Boliveira, Isis Valverde, Felipe Abib, Antônio Calloni, César Troncoso, Marcos Paulo and Flavio Bauraqui.

 http://youtu.be/426CZGDKLU8

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Nabil Ayouch’s HORSES OF GOD, Morocco’s Submission for the 2014 Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, will be released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber, with a planned release in May, 2014.  “HORSES OF GOD” had its World Premiere in’ Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win multiple awards including Best Director at the Seattle International Film Festival.  The film, inspired by the terrorist attacks of May 16th, 2003 in Casablanca, follows two young men living in the slum of Sidi Moumen in Casablanca, caught up in Islamic fundamentalism and become martyrs.

In HORSES OF GOD, 10-year-old Yachine lives with his family in the Sidi Moumen slum in Casablanca. His mother leads the family as best as she can. His father suffers from depression, one of his brothers is in the army, another is almost autistic and the third, Hamid (13), is the neighbourhood boss and Yachine’s protector.

When Hamid is sent to jail, Yachine takes job after job, however hopeless, to try and lift himself up from the violence, misery and drugs that surround him. Released from prison, now an Islamic fundamentalist, Hamid persuades Yachine and his friends to join their “brothers”.

The Imam – their spiritual leader – starts to direct their arduous physical and mental preparation. One day, he tells them they have been chosen to become martyrs.

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Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou’s latest film COMING HOME starring Gong Li, and currently in post-production, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for release in the U.S. Inspired by Yan Geling’s “THE CRIMINAL LU YANSHI, COMING HOME is described as a romance drama chronicling the journey of a Chinese dissident (Chen Daoming) from the 1920′s to the 1990′s.

COMING HOME marks the twelfth collaboration between the Sony Pictures Classics team and Zhang Yimou, dating back to the 1991 Orion Classics release of RAISE THE RED LANTERN. Other films include HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, SHANGHAI TRIAD, THE STORY OF QIU JU and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. The film will also be SPC’s sixth collaboration with Producer Bill Kong which began in 2000 with Ang Lee’s Academy Award winning CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

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THE NOTEBOOK (Le Grand Cahier), directed by Janos Szasz (Woyzech, The Witman Boys) and the Hungarian entry for Best Foreign Language Film is set for release in the U.S. after having been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics.  Set on the onset of WWII, The Notebook, which stars Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration) and Ulrich Matthes (Downfall), tells the story of thirteen year old twins abandoned by their parents and forced to live with their cruel grandmother in a village on the Hungarian border. Studying the evil surrounding them, the twins learn to rely on their loyalty to one another, ultimately surviving in the face of challenging circumstances.

Adapted from Agota Kristof’s bestselling novel of the same name, The Notebook received The Grand Prix Crystal Globe, the top prize at the 2013 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it had its world premiere. The film also received The Europa Cinemas Labels Award, which supports theatrical exhibition in Europe, and had its North American premiere at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival. 

http://youtu.be/krrkKObqPv0

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The official trailer has been released for Yuval Adler’s BETHLEHEM, winner of six Israeli Academy Awards and Israel’s Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film – 86th Academy Awards.  BETHLEHEM tells the story of the unlikely bond between Razi, an Israeli secret service officer, and his Palestinian informant Sanfur. BETHLEHEM is set to be released in the U.S. on February 21, 2014.

Sanfur is the younger brother of a senior Palestinian militant. Razi recruited him when he was just 15, and developed a very close, almost fatherly relationship to him. Now 17, Sanfur tries to navigate between Razi’s demands and his loyalty to his brother, living a double life and lying to both. When the Israeli secret service discovers how deeply involved Sanfur is in his brother’s activities, Razi is faced with an impossible dilemma.

http://youtu.be/k-lz14rIs-A

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IN BLOOM, an award-winning film co-directed by Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, and Georgia’s Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film, will open in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center onJanuary 10, 2014. A national release will follow.

 IN BLOOM, the directorial debut of Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, is inspired by Nana’s personal memories of her youth in the troubled early 1990s in Georgia. The film follows inseparable friends Eka and Natia, both fourteen years old and at the end of their childhood in the early nineties Tbilisi, the capital of the newly independent Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The country is facing violence, war on the Black Sea coast (Abkhazia) and vigilante justice that plague society. But for Eka and Natia, life just unfolds: in the street, at school, with friends or elder sisters who are already dealing with male dominance, early marriage and disillusioned love. For these two girls in bloom, life just goes on…

IN BLOOM premiered at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the C.I.C.A.E. prize. The film went on to screen at a number of international film festivals picking up multiple prizes along the way, including the Special Jury Prize at the Montreal Film Festival and the FIPRESCI prize and Golden Firebird in Hong Kong. In US, the film screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival and at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, where it won the New Auteurs Award for Personal Storytelling. IN BLOOM has been selected to screen at the upcoming Palm Springs International Film Festival in January 2014.

http://youtu.be/ynYAVerw9fY

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