The Light of Hope (La llum d’Elna), a Spanish-language film directed by Silvia Quer from a script by Margarita Melgar, begins in a celebratory mood, as Pat, a boy of nine or ten, runs through the grounds of an old estate in the French countryside, threading his way through a beehive of activity. What is…
The Last Suit (El Último Traje), the second feature film by writer/director Pablo Solarz (“Intimate Stories”) is an Argentine/Spain production that follows the journey of Abraham Bursztein (Miguel Ángel Solá, “The Impatient Alchemist”) an 88-year-old holocaust survivor who found refuge in Argentina, where he created a life for himself, working as a tailor and raising…
It’s a rare piece of cinema that is able to hearken back to atrocities committed during World War II through spoken recollections in the midst of a home invasion plot, but that’s exactly what we’ve been given with Winter Hunt (“Winterjagd”). Astrid Schult has crafted a unique, aging Nazi thriller, brimming with unending desires to…
Grass is a symbol of renewal in Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s latest film, simply titled Grass, his fourth in the last twelve months. Only 66 minutes in length and shot in black and white by cinematographer Kim Hyungku, the film is set in a quiet Seoul café where the camera intrudes on conversations that begin…
“I feel like I am the moon, so bright. But after a while, the brightness is fading away” — Tantra The Persian poet Rumi said, “The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden” In Bali, Sekala and Niskala refer to the everyday world we see through…
“I feel wherever I go, that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here, and always too soon” — Speak Low, Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash Georg (Franz Rogowski, “Tiger Girl”), a Jewish radio and TV technician fleeing from persecution in Germany en route to Marseilles, waits in a dimly lit café in Paris for a friend…
The term “Cold War,” especially in cinema, usually evokes images of espionage, militarism, geopolitics and stern men speaking tersely in jargon that is only comprehensible to those with a working knowledge of the genre. Pawel Pawlikowski (“The Woman in the Fifth”) defies such expectations with his film Cold War, a starkly beautiful romance that deftly…
