Cinema Directory

Languages: Russian

Summary: A charming tale of a young school girl who encounters a strange machine that takes her on an adventure throughout time. From cavemen to pirates, our young heroine encounters all types of people and makes some interesting friends along the way.

Summary: A film set in the Basque region, beginning in the 1875 civil war and ending during the war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.

Summary: In 1939, in a French prison camp, José Garcés of the defeated Spanish Republican army raises the spirits of his fellow prisoners by telling the story of the year he was 8 years old, 1911, in a small town in northeastern Spain. He was a rascal, baffling his father, always in trouble, and in love with Valentina, a neighbor girl. On his roof top at night he sends semaphore messages to her. He writes poems. He gets them into trouble, killing her father's breeding pigeons. When the two families camp at a decaying castle, his tutor, a sympathetic priest, tells him about the most valiant men, the saints, the heroes, and the poets. Already a poet, he learns a lesson about being a hero.

Languages: Czech

Summary: Inspired by fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" is a surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world.

Summary: Set against the backdrop of a liberalization in Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia in 1968, this comedy is about the coming of age of Petar (Slavko Stimac) as he looks for love just about anywhere, now that he has discovered it exists. His father (Danilo Stojkovic) is a distant sort who wants him to focus on his grades so he will have a chance at a good future (and be a good Marxist), but Petar's card-shark of a grandfather understands and offers him the advice he needs. Meanwhile, Petar has a crush on his beautiful teacher and wreaks havoc with his academic standing by trying to get back at her for bathing in the river with her male companion. This affront to his feelings is soon forgotten when he meets a charming young miss who is visiting the town with a youth orchestra -- and love takes off from there. Reminiscent of the theme of budding adolescence in earlier films like Black Peter by Milos Forman or Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains, director Goran Paskaljevic shares his famous fellow Czechs' comic insight into the throes of first and uneasy love.

Summary: This movie is about a detention home of troublesome teenage girls. The movie mainly focuses on Juli, played well by Julianna Nyako who would also be in an unavaliable Janos Rozsa film Kabala. Juli doesn't like the detention home and runs to home often where she's even less wanted. A widow takes her out of pity but Juli ruins that by starting a relationship with her teenage son. At the end Juli has even less freedom than when she started.

Summary: This drama focuses on a father, desperately fighting for custody of his daughter against his ex-wife. After the divorce from his wife Petra, cabinet maker Alex has to pay maintenance for his daughter Lisann, who suffers from seeing her father only for the week-ends. When Petra announces that she will move to Hamburg with Lisann and her new longtime companion, Alex spontaneously takes the child on a trip to Mallorca -without telling his ex-wife about it. Believing Alex has kidnapped the child, Petra informs the police...

Languages: Swedish

Summary: It is summer in Sweden and two boys are given a dare by a girl they know: If they go into the women’s area at the pool for naked bathers they will win a prize, if not the girl win one. And the prizes are either pocket money or a kiss.

Summary: Set in the late 50s, "Veneno para las Hadas" is the story of the strange friendship between two little girls. Flavia (Elsa María Gutiérrez) is a very rich girl who has just moved to the city and in her first day of school befriends Verónica (Ana Patricia Rojo), a very smart girl who is fascinated with witchcraft and claims to be a witch herself. What at first is an innocent friendship soon becomes a nightmare as the gullible Flavia is tortured psychologically by the possessive Verónica and her threats of using her witchcraft against her.

Summary: This award-winning film by André Melançon -- set on a ranch on the pampas of Argentina -- tells the story of three children spending a summer with their grandfather. The youngest, Felipe, makes friends with a puppy; his older brother, Daniel, breaks and train his first horse; their 13-year-old sister, Laura, struggles with the transition between childhood and growing up. The kids find it difficult to adapt to their proud and stubborn grandfather, and he learns that he has to change his ways and try to understand them as they all experience the joys and sorrows of growing up and growing old.

Comments: Some secrets can't be hidden

Summary: Chrissy (Priscilla Knetemann) is ferociously protective of her younger brother Tommy (Bram van den Hooven), whom she vigilantly protects from their abusive older brother. One day, on a family camping holiday in the Hebrides, her hatred for him bubbles up to the surface and she pushes him off a ferry pier. Now responsible for her big brother's death, she takes Tommy and runs. They hide in a car belonging to Agnes Stam (Henny Orri), a sweet, slightly dotty old lady who cares for the two stowaways unquestioningly, growing attached to them and even harbouring them from the police.

Agnes and Chrissy seem to understand each other innately. They are both strong-willed and stubborn and share unlikely relationships with their brothers, characterized by fierce, almost excessive devotion. They also share the ability to dissociate from traumatic reality and escape into worlds of their own creation. Agnes is haunted by visions from her past, but seems to thrive on them. She cherishes the memory of her dead brother Robert in a manner better suited to a widow than a sister - and he seems to have doted on her as well, perhaps in compensation for a shattering childhood accident that was partially his fault.

Summary: A 13 year old girl (14 year old Julia Brendler) falls in love with the 18 year old boy next door and decides to have sex with him. He loves her to, so they do it, and have sex on and off for a couple years until one day they are caught. Their fathers have been fueding for years, so her dad presses charges. The story deals with their schoolmates and the authorities and how they deal with it. Over time they begin to see beyond the letter of the law, and start to see the young couple in love who only want to spend their lives together, and make their judgements accordingly. Interestingly, dispite its subject matter and nudity, this film was considered an educational film and was first shown on German TV, even with miss Brendlers extensive full frontal nudity.

Summary: Set against the backdrop of the 1960s Space Race, the spiritual and emotional journey of a nine-year-old girl and her father, whose alcoholism is a burden on the family. This movie was rewarded an Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Movie in 2003.

Summary: A couple from the city have bought an old farmhouse to spend holidays and week-ends with their son, in a rural environment. When they stumble upon a 10 year-old orphan and his older sister, they decide to take them in for a couple of days.. unable to forsee the consequences..

Summary: Benny manages to save a wounded otter. When the Otter dies, a goblin emerges telling Benny he will revive the animal under one condition: Benny and Constanze have two days to find out who killed the otter.

Summary: The sequel to Nefnukej Veverko, this is the continuing story of the dreams and aspirations, the imaginary world of a small girl. Last time she had to adjust to and understand the birth of a brother - this time the girl has to cope with the death of Grandfather, the only grown up who did understand her playful and imaginative look upon the world.

Summary: In his film, director Roberto Ando explores the relationship between a brother and sister who, as very young children, are eyewitnesses to their mother’s murder. Older brother Leo (played by the, as you will see, nearly ubiquitous Alessio Boni) has channeled his trauma into a successful career as a child psychologist. Of his own admission, he buries his memories deep beneath those of his patients’, which he absorbs like a sponge. As we watch the aforementioned repressions persistently bubble to the surface of his conscious mind, it becomes obvious that Leo is barely able to keep his brains together. When Leo visits his childhood house for the first time since his mother’s death, the recall he experiences gives him the emotional bends. For the remainder of the film, Leo arduously struggles to reconcile himself with the tragedies of a former life.

Summary: Carol, a twelve-year-old Spanish-American girl from New York, travels with her mother to Spain in the spring of 1938, at the height of the Civil War. Separated from her beloved father, Carol arrives in her mother's home village and transforms the secretive family environment. Her innocence and rebellious nature drive her at first to reject a world that is at once new and foreign. But she soon journeys into adulthood through a friendship with Maruja, the village teacher, and a young local boy, Tomiche.

Comments: Childhood lasts a lifetime...

Summary: This is an affecting story about a father's attempts to mend the breaches in the relationship between himself and his 10-year-old daughter. Emmanuel (Sami Frey) is the father of Elise (Mara Goyet) by his first marriage, and the stepfather of an older daughter by his second marriage. He tries to make the best of both family relationships by taking off to visit his young daughter on the weekends, but that only makes his new family a little jealous - especially his stepdaughter. She herself is confused about her own relationship with him. After a particularly emotional send-off one weekend, Emmanuel and Elise take a trip from the south of France into Spain, working on a film project. Through a series of round-about conversations, Emmanuel manages to open up a few channels of communication with Elise - channels that expand even wider when he uses the technique of talking into her video camera to express thoughts and feelings that otherwise would have remained hidden.

Summary: Advertising executive Gerard Floque (Roland Giraud) has the worst day of his life in this routine comedy. He comes home after losing his job to find his daughter arrested on drug charges and his wife Cecile (Clementine Celaire) in bed with a famous television personality (Gerard Rinaldi). Gerard finds romantic solace in the arms of his former secretary Martine (Mary-Anne Chazel).

Summary: Two babies are switched at birth. When the mistake is discovered 12 years later, it leads to complications in the lives of both families. One family is affluent, with dutiful and (apparently) contented children. The other family is poor, with rambunctious (even delinquent) children, often hungry, but with lots of laughter in the house.

Comments: Funny & Sexy!

Summary: Jan Bocquoy narrates the story of his sexual life to age 28, imagining his conception (parents drunk, the encounter lasting ten seconds) and reporting his first orgasm (at the hands of Eddy, in a beach-side caravan, as they watch Laurel and Hardy), his comparative experiences with girls, and his move from Harelbeck to Brussels. There he meets Greta, bartender at a Bohemian cafe, who teaches him the Kama Sutra, the naked Esther, who reads him stories, and Thérèse, his wife for three years. They split after two children; he moves to a small flat, writes pornography to pay the bills, works sporadically on a novel, espouses anarchism, and meets more women. His self-confidence grows.

Languages: Czech, English, Roma

Comments: Vierka, or The Mystery of Family B’s Disappearance

Summary: When Czech singer Ida Kelarová meets the young Roma singer, Vierka Berkyová, she discovers an extraordinary and vibrant talent. Determined to develop her musical abilities and career, she brings her and her family from their home in Slovakia to live in the Czech Republic. They are encouraged to learn new routines and develop their lives in a variety of 'productive' ways. Then, one day they disappear without trace. What began as a document about Vierka develops into a mystery. Director Miroslav Janek (editor of Powaqqatsi) manages to trace them and provides an explanation of sorts. What the film records is the meeting of two ways of life, where the Roma parents seek to maintain their family links, where singing in the local bar counts for more than celebrity. It's a compelling film that discovers its own narrative, observes without concluding and allows viewers to form their own judgments.

Summary: 6th grade is having a new substitute teacher. She is very ambitious and wants to train the class to win an international competition for European schoolchildren in Paris. Evidently, this substitute is not, what they are used to – apparently she can read the children’s minds, and when she is alone with the pupils in class, she is downright malicious. The children immediately make a complaint about her, but she succeeds in convincing the parents, that she is fantastic – though the class claims, that she is an evil “alien” from a strange planet. The substitute achieves this through her irresistible charm, and soon the parents turn their suspicions towards the children, since their exaggerated imagination seems loaded with too much science fiction, sick video games and mad movies…

Comments: What Demonic Force Lurks Behind Those Eyes?

Summary: In the small English village of Midwich everybody and everything falls into a deep, mysterious sleep for several hours in the middle of the day. Some months later every woman capable of child-bearing is pregnant and the children that are born out of these pregnancies seem to grow very fast and they all have the same blond hair and strange, penetrating eyes that make people do things they don't want to do.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1; French, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

Comments: Beware the Children

Summary: An American village is visited by some unknown life form which leaves the women of the village pregnant. Nine months later, the babies are born, and they all look normal, but it doesn't take the "parents" long to realise that the kids are not human or humane.

Summary: Fredrik, the single father of Magda, is too occupied with his race horse Kisa to see that his daughter has problems in school. But one day Magda brings home a new friend, Helena, caller at the local bingo hall. Fredrik is soon smitten by the frank and outspoken 29-year-old. Helena and a self-confident Magda help Fredrik to see why his horse never wins the races.

Languages: English, French

Comments: Love Sex Passion Fear Obsession

Summary: A group of male friends become obsessed with a group of mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents after one of them commits suicide.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: Two sisters. One remarkable adventure that will bring them together.

Summary: A teenage girl, trying to come to grips with the death of her mother in a horse-riding accident, nurtures the foal of her mother's horse.

Summary: Sometimes it takes something special to bring a mother and daughter together. For thirteen year-old Lucy and her mom, Holly, it took a little magic. One day a strange computer glitch causes Holly to transform into a teenager leading to craziness, fun and ultimately true friendship.

Summary:

Summary: In a tale akin to “Romeo and Juliet,” the friendship between two children is threatened by their parents’ differences. Malú is from an upper-class family and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgito’s mother (Luisa María Jiménez Rodríguez), a poor socialist proud of her family’s social standing, places similar restrictions on her son. What neither woman recognizes is the immense strength of the bond between Malú and Jorgito. When the children learn that Malú’s mother is planning to leave Cuba, they decide to travel to the other side of the island to find Malú’s father and persuade him against signing the forms that would allow it.

Summary: During a war, a mother moves her children from Prague to a quiet mountain village. While the war remains the backdrop for the entire film, Kachyna creates for the viewer a magical world filled with the games and fantasy filled world of the children.

Summary: Biopic of Spain's Juan Carlos Delgado "El Pera", a young delinquent in the 1980's who is a car pilot and a sport journalist nowadays.

Summary: A sterile Argentinian colonel, living in exile in Paris with his wife, resorts to stealing poor boys off the street in order to form a makeshift family. One day a magician arrives at their home and convinces them to take in his 15 year-old daughter.

Languages: English

Summary: A twelve year old boy who escapes from the tyranny of Nazism in the Netherlands finds himself be taken care of by s sympathetic family. The boy has gay tendencies but is not aware of them until he meets a Canadian soldier who is gay. They become friends despite a considerable age difference and the soldier uses the boy sexually while the boy, in turn, falls in love with the soldier. When the soldier leaves abruptly, the boy?s heart is broken. The pain of that separation haunts the kid through his adult life and as the movie attempts to show the healing of the pain, we find how sympathetic we are.

Summary: Dr. Alan Aisling is an antiquities professor who has lost his wife and struggles to keep his daughters' spirits high and his loneliness at bay. His younger daughter Cassie daydreams about the mythical world her illustrator mother left behind in her drawings and annoys her older sister Miranda.

Then something magical happens: The family find themselves fleeing a plague of monstrous trolls by boarding a mysterious ship called The Unicorn. They are given a quest to find the benevolent dragon that once ruled the legendary faerie isles, before the demon trolls arrived.

They partake of the quest that shows them the wonder of the mythological worlds: Fire-breathing dragons, the mermaids' siren songs and the Minotaur's labyrinth, and try to re-ignite an enthusiasm for life within the family.

Summary: Sisters Léa and Aurélie, 19 and 13, live in Paris with their mom. They miss their dad, who drowned. Their mom has a new man, Vincent, a cop. The girls are angry, stealing wallets from gymnasium locker rooms and running a con on men Aurélie invites to an empty gym (Léa bursts in, law book in hand, quoting the penal code on statutory rape). Aurélie befriends a runaway, Anne-Sophie, 19, who tells them her dad, who's abandoned her, lives across the street; Léa reluctantly takes her in and designs a series of vengeful pranks that disrupt his life. Things get worse when a victim of their scam has a heart attack. All roads lead back to their dad's death. Can healing happen?

Summary: Shkolnik Cyrus has only one drawback - he wears glasses.Therefore, when the boy meets Ainu, hides them in his pocket, and its crafty question whenever argues that forgot the glasses at home. In the meantime, my mom Kira finds that his only drawback is that he always says what they think. However, their view is not entirely disagree. Once at the Cyril you a true friend - an old watch, a participant of Great Patriotic War. The boy surprised and pleased to learn that Aina - his granddaughter. (automated translation from Cyrillic)

Summary: A filmmaker has to deal with obnoxious producers, uncooperative weather, and a troublesome cast -- not all of whom have opposable thumbs -- in this satiric comedy-drama. Rosta (Boleslav Polivka) is a director whose latest project is an ambitious film that draws parallels between the lives of humans and animals, and as illustration he's cast the members of a local nudist colony, who are to interact naked with a group of apes. However, the cold weather doesn't do much for the esprit de corps of his human cast, while the primates predictably refuse to take direction. Meanwhile, Rosta's backers are demanding more comic relief, the screenwriter argues for a more emotional approach, and Rosta's family shows up unannounced, getting in the way despite their best intentions.