international films – Page 4

TRANSIT [GERMANY], THU 30 JANUARY, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 22 films

This thriller about refugees, riot police and stolen identities in 1940s Germany has a chilling topicality. From Christian Petzold [Barbara], the director renowned as a modern master of suspense and a poet of Germany’s divided self.

German refugee Georg has fled Paris to escape the impending war. He has assumed the identity of a famous but deceased writer and plans to use the man’s documentation to obtain a transit visa and immigrate to Mexico. But when Georg encounters the dead man’s wife in Marseille, he finds himself dangerously drawn to her.

The latest film from Christian Petzold [Barbara, Phoenix] is adapted from the 1944 novel by Anna Seghers. The result is a thrilling and unique piece of work.

In Christian Petzold’s superbly deft drama, a fugitive steals someone else’s identity with deeply disturbing results. – The Guardian ★★★★

An existential thriller about loss, trauma, statelessness and historical amnesia, the brilliant Transit is the latest from the German director Christian Petzold. – New York Times

An extraordinary film that uses the occasion of Georg’s fraught journey to depict his state of being, the anxious limbo in which he finds himself trapped. – Wall Street Journal

Click here for website.

Germany, 2018 | Language: German | 102 minutes | Cert: 12A

Director: Christian Petzold

Cast: Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese

March 9, 2019

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ROJO [ARGENTINA], THU 6 FEBRUARY, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 22 films

Set in 1970s Argentina just before the coup that installed the military junta. The life of a seemingly honest lawyer unravels as middle-class society turns a blind eye to the brutality of an emerging dictatorship.

The life of esteemed lawyer Claudio begins to unravel when Chilean private detective Sinclair starts asking questions about the disappearance of a mysterious stranger. Sinclair proceeds to lift the veneer of respectability under which Claudio, like many of the town’s other apparently honest citizens, operates.

Part mystery, part thriller, Rojo swiftly escalates from the intriguing to the alarming. It simmers with malevolence.

Shame and fury in the land of the disappeared… a disturbing parable of iniquity. – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian ★★★★

A South American Colombo in a bravely staccato film. – The Irish Times ★★★★

A society manoeuvers to stay at the dinner table while getting its unsavoury elements thrown out, and finding ways to stop them ever coming back. – The Telegraph ★★★★

When neighbours disappear… An elegant but disjointed thriller unravels a tale of personal guilt in the political dark days of 70s Argentina. – Wendy Ide, The Guardian ★★★★

98% from Rotten Tomatoes.

Argentina, 2018 | Language: Spanish | 109 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Benjamín Naishtat

Cast: Darío Grandinetti, Andrea Frigerio, Alfredo Castro

March 8, 2019

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A FAITHFUL MAN (FRANCE – L’HOMME FIDÈLE), THU 13 FEBRUARY, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 22 films

Marianne, Abel’s girlfriend of three years, tells him that she is pregnant. Unfortunately for Abel, the father is his best friend, whom Marianne is now going to marry. A delightfully playful and truly French romantic comedy.

Shifting points of view as nimbly as its players switch partners, the sophomore feature from actor/director Louis Garrel—co-written with the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière—is at once a beguiling bedroom farce and a playful inversion of the patriarchal tropes of the French New Wave.

Slyly shifts from fake murder mystery to romantic comedy to family melodrama…stylish shenanigans and a highly entertaining love triangle. – Irish Times ★★★

France, 2018 | Language: French | 75 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Louis Garrel

Cast: Louis Garrel, Laetitia Casta, Lily-Rose Depp

March 7, 2019

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SCRIBE [BELGIUM, FRANCE], THU 12 OCTOBER, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 17 films

Some things cannot be unheard.

Duval (François Cluzet – The Intouchables, Little White Lies) is a recovering alcoholic struggling to find a job. One day, the mysterious Clement (Denis Podalydès) offers him a high-paying job transcribing tape recordings. After taking up the unusual offer, Duval quickly finds himself in morally and legally dubious territory. He reluctantly becomes embroiled in a shadowy world of paranoia, political scandal, and ultimately violence.

Embracing the spirit of 1970s conspiracy thrillers like The Conversation, Scribe is a taut, moody thriller that feels endearingly old school. From the mysterious setup to the life-or-death climax, this is an affectionate homage that also updates the classics to reflect the seedy underbelly of modern politics.

LA MÉCANIQUE DE L’OMBRE | France, 2016 | Language: French | 88 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Thomas Kruithof

Cast: François Cluzet, Denis Podalydès, Sami Bouajila

A short Irish film, January Hymn [12 minutes], will be shown before the feature. A reflection on the intangible experience of grief, January Hymn sees Clara return home for the first anniversary of her father’s death. Director: Katherine Canty

December 16, 2016

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MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE [FRANCE], THU 26 OCTOBER, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 17 films

The first-ever animated (stop motion) film shown by Cork Cine Club! Academy Award nominee, Best Animated Feature 2017.

“Here is a little miracle of gentleness, tenderness and intense, traditional Frenchness. It was an Oscar nominee for best animated feature earlier this year, losing out, probably unjustly, to Zootopia. The screenwriter Céline Sciamma [Girlhood] has adapted the 2002 novel Autobiography of a Courgette by Gilles Paris for this beguiling stop-motion animation. Director Claude Barras makes his feature debut.

The characters’ faces are big, almost like Charles Schulz’ Peanuts figures, and very expressive and subtle. It is the story of a little boy fond of kites who is interestingly named Icare but goes by his nickname: Courgette. A terrible accident means he is taken to a home in the country for orphaned kids, where everyone has a grim, secret story and the children’s growing awareness that no one really wants them manifests itself in all sorts of tough behaviour.

But after a rough start, Courgette makes friends with Simon and forms a tendresse for Camille. Meanwhile, the lonely, unhappy cop who dealt with Courgette’s case, Raymond, has taken a kindly interest in his continued welfare.

It is a lovely little film, coming in at a novella-size 66 minutes. I loved the home’s emotional wallchart, the Météo des Enfants, showing their mood swings from sunny to cloudy.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘A beautifully balanced visual marvel…full of decency and kindness’. – ★★★★★ The Irish Times

‘A frank and affecting animation about abused youngsters finding strength through solidarity… this beautifully tender and empathetic film addresses kids and adults alike in clear and compassionate tones that span – and perhaps heal – generations…only the most hard-hearted viewer could fail to love these youngsters’. – ★★★★★ The Telegraph

MA VIE DE COURGETTE |Switzerland, France, 2017 | Language: French | 70 minutes | Cert: 12A

Director: Claude Barras

Cast: Gaspard Schlatter, Sixtine Murat, Paulin Jaccourd

A short Irish film, Breathe, [14 minutes] will be shown before the feature. A macho Traveller [John Connors] becomes increasingly concerned that his young son is soft. Director: James Doherty

December 14, 2016

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CLASH [EGYPT], THU 16 NOVEMBER, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 17 films

Mohamed Diab brings claustrophobic intimacy to a historic moment in this stunning thriller, set inside a police vehicle during Egypt’s 2013 street protests.

“The Egyptian revolution that dislodged Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and its chaotic aftermath continues to give us some fascinating films. Here is the latest, a rather amazing New Wave-style drama that combines claustrophobic intimacy with some logistically epic scene-setting.

The year is 2013, the army has just unseated Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-army and pro-MB factions clash on the streets. A reporter and photographer are arrested and thrown into the back of a police van, which is the sole camera setting; soon, other demonstrators from both sides are chucked in – along with, in one particularly chaotic scene, a lenient cop. They are crowded in there for hours in the boiling heat with no water and a plastic bottle to pee in. Through the grille-meshed window they get glimpses of the turmoil on the city streets.

At first, it looks like a no-budget movie with about a dozen people shot in a single location, but the director, Mohamed Diab, stages some spectacular riot scenes outside, which are all the more staggering for intruding on this enclosed space so unexpectedly.

The movie stunningly replicates that sense of inside and outside that must be felt by witnesses to any historic moment: the private debate, the enclosed conflict, and the theatre of confrontation unfolding beyond. What a dynamic piece of cinema.” – Peter Bradshaw The Guardian

‘Bravura film-making with a kick-in-the-gut message about chaos and cruelty.’ – Variety

‘Director Mohamed Diab won’t let us pick sides in this prize-winning drama which is thick with tension.’ – ★★★★ The Evening Standard

Click here to read an interview with the director.

ESHTEBAK | Egypt, 2017 | Language: Arabic | 97 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Mohamed Diab

Cast: Nelly Karim, Hani Adel, El Sebaii Mohamed

Director Gavin FitzGerald will attend on the night, and introduce his short Irish documentary, The Truth About Irish Hip Hop, about the rise of hip hop in Ireland and the changing attitudes towards the once foreign art form. His 19 minute short film will be shown before the feature.

December 11, 2016

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THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE [FINLAND], THU 23 NOVEMBER, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 17 films

Combines poignancy with torrents of laughter. ★★★★★ The Telegraph

Finland’s master of deadpan comedy, Aki Kaurismäki (Lights in the Dusk, Le Havre), returns with the story of an unlikely friendship between a Syrian asylum seeker and an elderly Finnish restaurant owner. Winner of the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director, it’s a beautiful, timely film from one of the world’s leading auteurs.

Khaled (Sherwan Haji) arrives at the port of Helsinki concealed in a coal container, fleeing war-torn Syria to seek asylum in Finland. Dazed and frustrated by the monolithic administration he encounters at the detention centre, he makes a break for it and heads out onto the streets.

There he meets Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen), a former shirt salesman who has recently left his alcoholic wife for a new life as a bachelor restaurateur. Together, they help each other to navigate the adversities they face in these unfamiliar and often baffling new worlds.

With hilarious sight gags, poker-faced one liners and a toe-tapping rockabilly soundtrack, Kaurismäki’s latest balances his unparalleled wit with a pressing critique of the unforgiving bureaucracy that greets vulnerable asylum seekers in modern-day Europe.

Humane and sincere, it’s proof of cinema’s power to tell stories that matter, with beauty and heart.

‘Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki’s film is filled with curious oddballs, but there are also many ethical connundrums to contend with.’ – ★★★★ The Irish Times

‘Finds the artist at the height of his powers… winsome, sweet, and often very funny.’ – Indiewire

Click here for website.

TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN |Finland, 2017 | Language: Finnish | 98 minutes | Cert: 12

Director: Aki Kaurismaki

Cast: Ville Virtanen, Kati Outinen, Tommi Korpela, Sakari Kuosmanen

Director Sinéad O’Loughlin will attend and introduce her short Irish film, Homecoming, about a young man’s struggles to find his place in life after returning to Ireland. A familiar face makes him wonder if things are about to change. Her 12-minute film will be shown before the feature.

December 10, 2016

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20TH CENTURY WOMEN [USA], THU 30 NOVEMBER, 8PM

By Jamiearchive, Season 17 films

Annette Bening stars as a single mother who recruits two women to help raise her son in this warm drama set in Southern California in the late 1970s.

“Director Mike Mills follows Beginners, his Oscar-winning study of the relationship between a son and his gay father, with another picture that takes as its jumping-off point the bond between parent and child. In the case of this late 70s-set cultural odyssey, the parent is gregarious, open-minded single mother Dorothea (the superb Annette Bening) and the child is Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), the teenage son she isn’t quite sure she can guide on his path to becoming a man.

To this end, she recruits the help of two other women to help raise him. Her lodger, Abbie (Greta Gerwig), is a photographer crowd surfing on the anger and energy of the new wave scene. And Julie (Elle Fanning) is Jamie’s best friend, a sullen beauty who is casually oblivious to the fact that he is in love with her.

But the 20th century is almost as important a character as the women. Mills weaves together a tapestry of social, cultural and political strands. In part of the extensive voiceover, delivered predominantly by Dorothea and Jamie, the boy talks of his last memory of his absent father – a birthday in 1974 – which deftly links mid-70s fashion trends (mirrored sunglasses) with news events (President Gerald Ford’s historic tumble down the steps of Air Force One) and with vomit on a carpet.

Mills makes reference to the experimental documentary Koyaanisqatsi with accelerated clips of teeming southern California life; he even includes a clip of Koyaanisqatsi itself to emphasise the parallel. Dorothea’s 1940s jazz rubs shoulders with Talking Heads and Black Flag; still photography mood boards give way to psyched-out, colour-saturated “film burn” effects, which nod to the California hippie hotbed that spawned the film’s other key character, William (Billy Crudup). There’s a certain arch self-awareness in the screenwriting that won’t appeal to everyone, but I loved the film for its scrapbook structure, its warmth and candour.” – Wendy Ide, The Guardian

‘Annette Bening is the pitch-perfect centerpiece.’ – Los Angeles Times

Click here to read feature article about the film in the Los Angeles Times.

USA, 2017 | Language: English | 118 minutes | Cert: 16

Writer/Director: Mike Mills

Cast: Annette Benning, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann

December 9, 2016

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