Cinema Directory

Languages: English, French

Comments: Believe.

Summary: Two girls photograph fairies in their garden in 1917 England, which astounds the world and forces people, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, to wonder if they too should believe in the magical world of fairies.

Languages: French, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

Summary: This is a psychological drama about Louis Riquier (Charles Berling), a veteran of the Algerian war and a divorced father whose wife (Beatrice Palme) has custody of their children and who barricades himself with the kids in his country house. The police and the press surround the house, but he does not want to surrender. Instead, he gets more and more violent. Manipulated by their father, the kids go along with the scenario, taking it as a game. The film has as background the turbulence of 1968, with all its left-wing political implications. As in the director's previous film (Vieux fusil (The Old Gun), the gun also has multiple purposes here. Literally speaking, it is the instrument of crime; metaphorically, it is the force that would liberate the poor victim from his tragic fate. But the hero is just too violent and emotionally disturbed to evoke one's pity. The film is heavy with many denunciations, trying to evoke the atmosphere of the early 1970's, but it loses its impact when it abandons character development in favor of political jargon and becomes only an imperfect copy of an important period in French history.

Summary: On a cold winter evening a young manager gets stuck in traffic on his way home from work. He takes his brand new cell phone to call his wife, not knowing that by doing so he is about to cause irrepairable damage.

Summary: When two children move into an old house with their mother they find magical mystery involving a lively spirit and a precious diamond.

Languages: German

Summary: With busy parents, nine-year-old Katja is left to her own devices. She devotes most of her time to birds. One day during a thunderstorm she rescues a rare falcon chick and seeks shelter in the back of a lorry. She drops off to sleep and wakes up to find herself in a faraway foreign sea-side town, where her adventures begin for real. While she is exploring the town, the falcon chick flies off on his own, and Katja now has her work cut out; one of the foreigners she encounters is also a passionate bird lover, but he is a taxidermist! Katja must save Kiik come what may. Fortunately she makes friends with four brothers who are full of pranks and mischief. In no time at all they set about helping Katja, the Danish bird girl.

Summary: Once seen, the made-for-TV Fallen Angel can never be forgotten. The late Dana Hill is nothing short of brilliant as Jennifer, a 13-year-old runaway girl who is slowly but inexorably seduced into the world of child pornography. Adding depth to Lew Hunter's screenplay is the fact that the older man responsible for Jennifer's downfall, played by Richard Masur, is not a slavering villain. Instead, partly because of his own abused childhood, he is as pathetically misguided as his victim, truly believing that his filthy activities are expressions of affection. First telecast February 24, 1981, Fallen Angel was one of the highest-rated TV movies of its time. Dana Hill amazingly looks 12 year old, while being 16 at the time of shooting.

Comments: A Dog. Two Kids. A Nanny & Loveable Con Man Unwrap The True Meaning of Christmas.

Summary: At Christmas Time, a guy named Donald Doc Holiday (played by Full House Dave Coulier) is a con man, cheating people out of money so he can live on the streets. He then comes across two orphan kids, brother and sister who are ready to be separated to different foster homes. The kids plan to stay together no matter what. The kids and Donald pretend that they are a family so Donald can get money from his dead relative. Donald and the kids get a Nanny who thinks they are real family and doesn't know the truth. The foster home man is on the kids tail and the kids give him a hard way to go, which will make you laugh. The truth will come out and Donald Holiday will learn the true meaning of Christmas.

Comments: Er ist ein Star - sie erst 17 - Liebe in Trance ...

Summary: The hero-worship that Simone (Desiree Nosbusch) has for a pop singer is built to a crescendo until she passes out when she finally sees him up-close in a crowd of fans pushing him for autographs. She is later shocked when he lets her know that he does not love her. In an instant, she is caught "in a trance" and feels a murderous urge that is bigger than the both of them.

Summary: t’s grey and it’s raining. Penny is bored and doesn’t feel like getting up. She would rather stay in bed. She pretends she is ill and when her mother believes her, Penny thinks she can dream away. But she is wrong.
Penny is being taken to a nurse, to be looked after together with two other girls. Penny is not too exited by the thought of it, but a surprise waits ahead.
The nurse takes the three girls on a journey into a world filled with colours, music and laughter. Unluckily the joy doesnt last and the three girls are being picked up by their mothers. Back in her own world Penny are bored again. She can use the experiences from the nurse to change hers and her boring mothers world. She just has to remember it.

Languages: Swedish, Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie on the theatrical version, Unknown

Comments: En film av Ingmar Bergman

Summary:

Summary: As an orphaned teenager, Louba is taken in by a kindly family in the French countryside and develops an unusually passionate relationship with her stepsister Jeannie. The erotic tension between the two girls progressively channels itself into a fierce attachment to a boy, the sultry, romantic Charlie. A lurid tale of love and betrayal ensues. Years later, as young adults living in Paris, the three cross paths again.

Languages: English

Comments: One boy wants her love. One boy wants her dead.

Summary: Charlie Cox is a divorced writer who lives in Los Angeles. Charlie and his daughter Joleen are on their way home from a cross country vacation when they run out of gas in Banco, Nevada a small town located in a remote part of the desert, and it's one day before Jolene's 14th birthday. When they stop in the Banco supermarket, they notice that there's no one behind the counter, but sheriff Bill Childers is in the store. When Joleen looks at the floor behind the counter, she screams. She sees the body of the store's owner, Ferrell Hogus, in a pool of blood. Charlie and Joleen later check a nearby gas station owned by a friendly Vietnam war veteran named Duckett, but Duckett doesn't have any gas, so Charlie and Joleen check into the nearby Palomino Guest Ranch and Trailer Park, which is owned by an abusive woman named Agnes Reed. Joleen soon meets Agnes's rebelious teenage son Jimmy Reed. On that night, while Agnes is taking a bath, Agnes is killed when a hand reaches in through her bathroom window and pushes a small fan into the bathtub water, electrocuting Agnes. Charlie and Joleen also meet their neighbors, fellow travelers Louise and Amy. It's obvious that a killer is terrorizing Banco, and on the next day, when Jimmy tries to rape Joleen, Joleen is rescued by Pinky Sears, another teenager who lives at the guest ranch. Charlie and Joleen agree to car pool with Louise and Amy, and that night, as they are about to leave the guest ranch, the killer blows up the car with Amy in it to prevent Joleen from leaving, because the killer is now obsessed with Joleen. Joleen's diary is also stolen by the killer. When Jimmy tries to rob Duckett's gas station, Jimmy is arrested and accused of being the serial killer, but the killer turns out to be someone that Joleen thought was her friend.

Comments: A far off land, a far off journey, a far off adventure

Summary: In this 1993 Disney adventure, Reese Witherspoon and Ethan Embry are two young survivors of an African massacre. She is the daughter of a game warden; he is a sulky teen visiting his dad. When poachers do in the adults, the kids hotfoot it across the Kalahari Desert, aided by Witherspoon's young bushman pal (Sarel Bok). They have to cross about 1,000 miles of forbidding territory, all the while chased by nogoodnik Jack Thompson. The kids face down danger, have a few excessively cute escapades, and learn about their capacity for survival--and goodness. The highlights of the film are the lush cinematography and exotic locales of Zimbabwe and Namibia. Though this is a Disney production, it is too violent and intense for young children. It is based on the books "A Story Like the Wind" and "A Far Off Place", by Laurens Van der Post. "--Rochelle O'Gorman"

Summary: A family comedy: father is fired because he doesn't match the new corporate profile, Søs becomes a model and Ole struggles to get a band together, while Mie organizes a big talent show at school and Per attempts to solve the family's problems in his own special way.

Summary: Third sequel in the danish classic Father of Four series.

Summary: The family has won a caravan in a competiton, and they decide to take the family for holidays. They meet a circus director and the circus decide to travel with the family. That promises to be an adventurous summer!

Summary: The father of four, a family vacation to the Norwegian snow - cheerful film about a rather silly family and their incessant, harmless escapades in an idyllic world devoid of danger and change.

Summary:

Comments: Fest og sjov pÅ solskins-Øen

Summary: Father and his family have holidays. There is not much money, and hotels are fully booked on the holiday resort - so they decide they go camping, in a tent.

Summary: Number 3 in the Father of Four series. This time the family has an argument about where to go for the holidays. The kids want to visit the countryside but father wants to stay home. After a struggle father gives up and the family moves to Jutland.

Comments: Te va a iluminar el alma

Summary: Two Argentine sisters, Memé and Aneta, lose their mother in a car crash. Memé, the elder, is also left lame with one badly scarred leg. The orphaned girls go to Uruguay to stay with their aunts. The sisters often bicker, but they are actually very close. Memé flirts but has no luck with boys because of her injury... On their own now, Memé works as a waitress where she gets to know Andy. Returning to Montevideo, they meet Dolores, a friend of their late mother. Memé's affair with a man complicates her relationship with her sister. Then Andy invites the pair to his seaside retreat, a lighthouse...

Summary: A teacher tutors a student in her home with the intent of taking over the family. Using poisonous herbal teas and other psychological devices, she manipulates the husband into thinking his wife is going crazy.

Summary: During World War II South Sea beachcomber Walter Eckland is persuaded to spy on planes passing over his island. He gets more than he bargained for as schoolteacher Catherine Frenau arrives on the run from the Japanese with her pupils in tow!

Comments: Some desires can become nightmares

Summary: On his way to a medical convention, Dr Fausto runs into a man who claims the Doctor removed his stomach eight years ago in a surgical operation. Against all odds, he is still alive. The man turns up repeatedly and promises Fausto to make all his wishes come true. Reality starts dissolving and Fausto begins to loose control.

Summary: Hello, my name is Anna and I am nine years old. I wish you had known me before - I mean before my aunt Marga and my cousin Pilar came to my parents' house -, I was such a happy little girl. Before their coming life was a bed of roses. Of course my little brother could be a pain in the neck - little brothers always are, aren't they? - but there was that wonderful big house, there was my Cuban-born nanny who cooked so well, there was the bath before dinner, not to mention this wonderful catechism class at the catholic school. But they did come, those Spanish intruders. And now never heard before names like "Franco", "Allende", "Women's Lib", "abortion", the lot, have got into my life. Daddy and Mummy have suddenly become "communists", although this a term that Bon Papa and Bonne Maman (my grandparents from Bordeaux, in fact) just hate. Because of the intruders not only did we move to a tiny apartment but the place is invaded day and night by "barbudos" (bearded men). No more bath before dinner and no more catechism class. How long will I be able to tolerate such a scandal?

Languages: English

Summary: The Criminal Roy Kramer escapes from prison while being transferred by sea, dragging the policeman he's handcuffed to along with him. They end up on a deserted island, inhabited only by an eight-year-old girl, Angelica with her sister Beatrice and their nanny Martina. The policeman falls into the sea and drowns, and the child finds the keys to the handcuffs. Roy is finally free. Martina throws herself in his arms, but dies soon after in a senseless accident. Beatrice meets the same fate, after she offered herself to Roy' who is filled with remorse at this horrible destiny. But the child consoles him by telling him her favorite fairy tales' in which a handsome prince stranded on an island is about to be the victim of two wicked witches, but a little princess saves him by killing the witches with a magic spell. Roy is plagued by an horrible suspicion - that the child is the one that killed Martina and Beatrice. In his state of anguish he trips, falls, hits his head and faints. When he comes to his senses, he realizes he's been bound and gagged, and Angelica is telling him the end of the fairy tale.

Summary: At 28 years of age, poet Leo Breavman takes his memories of childhood and his female conquests as a starting point to create his work. In full identity crisis, he puts an end to his torrid liaison with Tamara in order to spend some time in New York. While writing in a coffee shop, Leo shares a glance with Shell, a graphic designer who divides her time between Montreal and New York. Not long after, the young woman leaves her husband and engages in a passionate affair with the poet.

Languages: English

Summary: Based on the popular American Girl series of dolls and books, this tale set in colonial Williamsburg follows 10-year-old Felicity Merriman (Shailene Woodley) as she becomes enamored with a beautiful mare and attempts to rescue the horse from its abusive owner. Along the way, the high-spirited girl learns valuable lessons of independence, responsibility and loyalty. John Schneider, Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Zegers lead the supporting cast.

Languages: French, Unknown

Summary: Gilles' wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she weeps. She decides on a strategy to keep him. Will she succeed?

Summary: About a couple who plan to separate, but before they do they decide to take their son on one more family holiday, and then tell him gently about their plans. However they find that the place they visit is idyllic, when they meet some some kind people their plans are diverted...

Summary: Fia thinks everyone is a clown. Except herself, her mother... and Bustric. This is a family film about eight-year-old Fia who for a long time has been a mother for her own mother. She has grown up in an "upside down" world where it is important that mother is never sad. But one day the police show up. Fia becomes the focus, and Fia's life will never be the same again. Fortunately she finds an ally in the magician and clown Bustric, who shows up whenever she really needs him. Because she had actually made up her mind: School was only supposed to last three months. If it's difficult to have one mother, having two is like an earthquake.

Comments: Wenn du den Richtigen gefunden hast, halt ihn fest!

Summary: "What does your paradise look like, then?" - "Dark. Quiet. Wet. And full of fish." Jan likes Shakespeare, water and fish. Nina likes roller-skates, cars and brightly dyed hair. Jan loves Nina. Nina loves Jan, but ... Do Fish Do It? is a film about first love, the problems of growing up, the vital question if fish have sex and a threat this love is exposed to. 16-year old Jan is absent-mindedly strolling through the streets when he's run over by roller-skating Nina. As fast as she has stormed into his life, however, she rushes off again. Nina is 15 years old and full of crazy ideas. She lives together with her brother, her father and his new girlfriend. Her mother isn't in touch much. That's why there is the unconventional Angel whose own daughter disappeared years ago and who is Nina's best friend and substitute mother. Jan is a little shy, with a sheltered upbringing. Yet the image of the perfect family is an illusion. Jan feels lonely and the only person who seems to understand him is his grandfather. Jan's great passion is water and fish for they make him forget about his illness. When Jan tries to carry a newly-acquired fish home safely, Nina bumps into him after another failed attempt to brake. As a result, the fish dies. Nina feels guilty, doesn't want to let Jan go. Within a short time they get very close and Nina becomes equally fascinated by water and its scaly inhabitants. They start searching for an answer to the question if fish have sex and secretly meet at night to have picnics at the municipal aquarium. This is not without effect, friendship develops into tender love. Jan's parents, who worry about their son's health, are against the relationship. Only Jan's grandfather stands by him and doesn't begrudge him his happiness. On her birthday Nina learns that her father's girlfriend is pregnant. Appalled, she flees to Jan. For the first time they end up in bed together. Basically a rather innocent encounter but Jan realizes all of a sudden that he's dangerous for Nina and will continue to be so. He withdraws into his dream world - "dark, quiet, wet and full of fish". But Nina won't give up that easily ...

Comments: Laugh your head off.

Summary: Timmy Robinson's best friend in the whole wide world is a six-foot tall rotting zombie named Fido. But when FIDO eats the next-door neighbor, Mom and Dad hit the roof, and Timmy has to go to the ends of the earth to keep Fido a part of the family. A boy-and-his-dog movie for grown ups, "FIDO" will rip your heart out.

Summary: When 16-year-old Finn is caught buying cocaine for his junkie but well intentioned mother Liz, his plans of spending the summer away from NYC with his anthropologist father studying the Ishkanani in the jungle are abruptly changed.

In an attempt to get both of their lives back on track, Liz moves the two of them out to a cottage on the country estate of her sugar daddy, Mr. Osborne. Finn immediately makes his way into the 'tribe' of wealthy country clubbers that inhabit his new home. Soon Finn is dating Mr. Osborne's granddaughter Maya and has found a best friend in her brother Bryce. Finn adjusts quickly to their life of fancy clothes, cars, horses, sex and drugs. Liz begins attending AA meetings and begins to establish herself as a loving mother working to correct her mistakes and win back Finn's love and trust.

Unfortunately things begin to spiral out of control, and he begins to see that the wealth and friendships bestowed upon him come at a price.

Languages: French

Summary: This is the story of two girls, Gwen (Le Besco) in the country, and Lise (Alyx) from the city, who visits Gwen every summer. This year, however, things are... different. As they make the transition from children to teens, their friendship might also be changing to... love.

Summary: "Laughing Water - Mine Ha-Ha" is based on "Mine-Haha or Physical Education of Young Girls" by German author Frank Wedekind (Spring Awakening, Lulu, Pandora's Vase). Thuringia, Germany, in the early 20th century. A group of young girls are brought up in a college withinh dark forests and gloomy lakes. Young Hidalla and her friends Irene, Vera, Blanka, Melusine and Rain are brought up in an isolated world: the girls don't know anything about live outside the college's high walls. At the age of 16, some of them start asking questions about their origins, their parents and the true purposes of the Headmistresses strict rules. When two of them disappear mysteriously, the initial fairytale atmosphere grows more and more eerie. Will the inspector from the nearby city discover the real purpose of the college? Will Hidalla be successful in her revolt against the destiny assigned to her by the Headmistress?

Languages: English

Summary: Public safety film intended to discourage children from trespassing on railway lines.

The film begins with a young boy sitting on a railway bridge wall. As he ponders on his thoughts, he considers the idea of holding an Olympic Games-style sports event on the railway line. The rest of the film shows his imagined idea of what would happen, with children being split into four competitive teams to take part in different activities often carried out by young people trespassing on the railway. Three "games" are held, in which the children are challenged to break through the fence surrounding the railway line, play "chicken" with the trains and throw things at passing trains. Each time we see the tragic consequences of these activities, such as one scene where a driver's face is shredded by broken glass after a child throws a brick through the train window. The final task is for the children to run through a tunnel, but after they enter, we see a train approaching. Only four children cross the end of the tunnel, each of them injured terribly. One boy who crosses the finish line collapses as the overhead speaker announces the final results. The film finishes as a group of adults appear and go into the tunnel to carry out the bodies of the dead and injured children, which are then laid out in a long line along the railway track. The camera pans out to show all the dead and bloodied children along the track before returning to the boy sitting on the railway bridge wall, who seems to be reconsidering the idea.

Summary: Dr. Finn Jeffries plays a new stepmother to her deceased lover's daughter Zelly. She also took over her lover's abortion clinic that is being protested by increasingly violent "pro-lifer's". The movie covers, teenage angst, death threats, abortion issues and love. All in all, interesting drama.

Summary: Fiona lives in suburbia as a housewife to her hard-working (and, it must be said, inattentive) husband Simon and her daughters. Their normal life is disrupted one morning when the police arrive to question Simon and seize his computers under suspicions oh him accessing child pornography. The police build their case and proceed with prosecutions while Fiona frantically tries to hold her family together and deal with her own feelings of betrayal, mistrust and fear.

Summary: While travelling to visit their grandfather, two children are told the story of a family curse that has lasted two hundred years. During Napoleon's Italian invasion, Elisabetta Benedetti fell in love with French soldier Jean - but while Jean was distracted, Elisabetta's brother Corrado stole some gold that Jean was guarding, and set the curse in train. The Benedettis become wealthy, corrupt and hated by their former friends, who rename them the Maledettis - the cursed. The childrens' grandfather Massimo is the last man to be directly affected by the curse - but will he pass it onto them?

Summary: "Fireflies in the Garden" is a portrait of a family, at once bound together and torn apart by an unexpected tragedy. Michael Taylor (Ryan Reynolds) is an author who has channeled his painful childhood memories into his novels. With some reluctance, he is flying home for his mother Lisa's (Roberts) college graduation. After a lifetime of putting everyone else first, stroking her husband's (Dafoe) massively insecure ego and raising her children in spite of that, it's Lisa's turn. What should be a moment of great celebration turns into a tragic reunion when Lisa is killed in a car accident, leaving father, son and family to pick up the pieces.

While preparing for their mother's funeral, memories are relived and secrets are revealed which will test the family bond. After a childhood of hiding in his father's shadows, protected by his mother, Michael must confront his past and find an understanding of his family, his father and himself.

Languages: English

Comments: She has the power . . . an evil destructive force.

Summary: A couple who participated in a potent medical experiment gain telekinetic ability and then have a child who is pyrokinetic.

Comments: A funny catch!

Summary: The film takes place on the Greek Island of Spetses, where widowed Greek-History Professor Thomas Bradley (Billy Zane) is about to lose his research grant studying ancient love spells. He knows he is close to a major academic breakthrough and desperately wants to continue his research. Thomas is given one last chance to continue his work on a Greek island, at the home of the supportive Oxford don, Professor Coulter. Joined by his 12 year-old daughter, Serena (Amber Savva), Thomas departs to the Greece island looking for the inspiration he needs to finish his thesis. Serena knows that what her father needs most of all is to find love again after the loss of his wife. Initially, Serena tries her hand at matchmaking with the local women on the island, who are less than impressed by the awkward and clumsy Thomas. Very much in tune to the ancient spirits herself, Serena meets Nereid (Kelly Brook) a beautiful mermaid. However, menace is present in the form of the evil Captain Mavros (Alki David), an island fisherman intent on killing Nereid and getting his claws on her priceless jewel-encrusted tail. Serena realises that she has finally found the ideal match for her father and employs her father's ancient Greek love spells to make them fall in love. Eventually Nereid sacrifices her immortality to become a mortal human being, joining Thomas and Serena back in Oxford where Thomas's thesis is received in triumph.

Languages: English

Comments: You are invited to discover the secret...

Summary: Five siblings are sent to stay with their uncle in a strange house by the sea. While exploring, they dig up an ill-tempered 8,000 year-old Psammead, or sand fairy, who grants them one wish a day. The consequences, however, are never quite what the children intended.

Summary: Based on a novel by Lorenzo Silva, this movie deals with the unusual and tragic relationship between a frustrated businessman and a 14-year-old student. After crashing into the rear of the car in front of him, Pablo Lopez starts arguing with the other driver, Sonsoles, who finally files for an injury claim against him. Therefore, the angry manager starts harassing her and observes her younger sister Maria in her schoolyard. When he gets to know the intelligent girl, his perception of life is changed totally, but their friendship leads into a tragedy...

Summary: Busily pursuing a career on the silver screen, film actress Isabelle (Brigitte Fossey) leaves her young daughter in the care of her own parents. When she returns home after the completion of her latest project, Isabelle is accompanied by a co-star lavishing affection on her, a situation which results in an explosive confrontation with her family.

Summary: Johanna doesn't think much about her Cousin Robert -- he seems to be rather a rascal. But when their parents go on a vacation, both children have to stay with their grandfather somewhere in Germany. Johanna finds out that Robert has different plans: He wants to discover a passage to the North Sea. And soon Johanna finds herself on a boat with three boys and a chicken called Gonzo, meeting all kinds of adventures on the river.

Languages: German, English, English, English

Comments: A family of orphaned geese who lost their way. A 14 year old kid who will lead them home. To achieve the incredible, you have to attempt the impossible.

Summary: A father and daughter decide to attempt to lead a flock of orphaned Canada Geese south by air.

Summary: Cherry Goode is a 10-year-old girl who lives in a slum of Los Angeles with her bitter, divorced mother and older teen sister Mandy. Cherry is often ignored and neglected by her mother and teen sister, and the only time Cherry does get attention is when she misbehaves or acts bad. So as a result, a bad reputation hangs on Cherry since her mother often does not want to talk with Cherry and instead dumps household chores on her. Cherry dreams of flying away from her lonely life and one day, has a run-in with her mysterious and reclusive next door neighbor, a former actress named Miss Christina (Shirley Knight), who gives Cherry the inspiration to dream of flying and hopes that her fantasy will come true.

Summary: Thor's father drinks, and Thor escapes to the woods and refuses to come home before he quits drinking. Lucky for Thor he has a lot of friends who help him.

Summary: A high-minded what-if movie that sternly trumpets its moral gravity, Reza Parsa's ''Before the Storm'' is a timely if overly schematic meditation on the gloomier implications of the notion that indeed we're all connected. While that's hardly news these days, the film, torn from current headlines about the exporting of terrorism and about gun-toting teenagers who open fire in public schools, would still like to disabuse us of any lingering illusions of insularity.

An Iranian who has lived in Sweden since 1980, Mr. Parsa brings to the film an acute sense of the outsider trying to fit in. Although set in Sweden, one of the most socially homogeneous of Western nations, that country is never identified. Nor is the place (possibly the Balkans) from which Ali (Per Graffman), one of the film's two main characters, has fled an ethnic rebellion against an implacably oppressive regime. The deliberate vagueness about location is intended to give the film a more universal resonance, but at times it makes it seem grandiose and forced.

At first Ali seems to be a happily married family man comfortably adjusted to his new life in a middle-class European society, his past all but forgotten. One of the few signs of his lingering sense of difference is his identification with Leo (Emil Odepark), a persecuted 12-year-old boy who attends the same school as his daughter Sara (Sasha Becker) and who fancies himself in love with her.

Leo's life at school is a living hell at the hands of the class bully, Danne (Martin Wallstrom), who in an early scene engineers Leo's excruciating humiliation in the girls' locker room. Almost at the same time, Ali's past opens up nightmarishly when an old woman boards his cab and issues a grim enigmatic warning before leaving him with a gift-wrapped package he fears might be a bomb.

Swiftly these two parallel dramas build to a climax. Leo, unable to bear any more torment, takes drastic action by stealing a gun belonging to his mother, a police officer (Tintin Anderzon), and lures Danne into the woods to threaten him with it. Ali's gift turns out to be not a bomb but an anguished videotaped message begging for his help from a woman he left behind 18 years earlier. Beside her is a son whom she identifies as his child. It emerges that the rebels are so desperate for advantage that they plan to kill them both unless Ali agrees to carry out the assassination of his adopted country's president. That leader is about to sign an agreement exporting rocket launchers to the regime for bombing the rebel strongholds.

As the twin dramas tighten and intertwine, you can feel the strain of gears being forced to mesh by the movie's metaphorical machinery, and its carefully plotted box-within-a-box structure threatens to suffocate any credibility. But in a movie so didactic, any device that can reinforce the moral dialogue is considered usable, even though the need to tie up loose ends and balance moral equations results in an overly schematic clunkiness.

Still, ''Before the Storm,'' which New Directors/New Films is screening at the Museum of Modern Art tonight at 9 and tomorrow at noon, works as precisely calibrated, well-acted political melodrama that pushes suspense buttons. And in its culminating hospital sequence, the movie boldly departs from any predictable scenario to take a surprising (and satisfying) tangent.

By the end, when Ali and Leo find themselves riding the same bus toward uncertain fates, Ali's strand of the story has assumed far more weight than Leo's. The movie's final, pointedly ambiguous view of violence (and resistance to violence) in a desperately unstable world is uncompromising in its bleakness.

Violence may beget violence, the film suggests, but it is also the most efficient way of discharging specific dirty tasks. And maybe when all is said and done, it's even necessary. In any case, those who imagine they're immune from these forces are fooling themselves. There is no sure escape.

Summary: Christine, breaks up with her boyfriend, Martin, before leaving for a school camp. While at camp, Christine seems to withdraw. Slowly, she slips further and further away from the others.

Summary: 14-year-old Lulu moves to a small provincial town with her mother and younger brother. One night, her brother is struck by a beam of white light – actually the spirit of Herman Hartmann from the 19th-century. To her despair, Lulu realizes that Herman has possessed her brother, and the two of them are whirled into a fevered adventure. They are joined by Oliver, a rich kid, and Richard, a disillusioned clairvoyant and inventor. Together, they take on the dark, supernatural forces gathering over the town – the evil from deep in the land of the dead, which seems determined to take over the world and see them die.

Comments: For one teacher and nine children, the lesson of the day is kill or be killed.

Summary: An Australian school teacher and her students are kidnapped. She and the children fight for their lives and try to escape from their captors.

Summary: At her new job in a rundown children's hospital, a nurse (Flockhart) desperately tries to keep her patients safe from a plague of random, mysterious attacks.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround

Summary: Frankie (Mischa Barton) and Hazel (Ingrid Uribe) are best friends in the small town of Percaucus, New Jersey. Frankie--called by some Francesca--is being raised by her grandmother, Phoebe (Joan Plowright); Frankie's parents were killed in a car accident when she was just a baby. Frankie's mother had been a famous ballerina, and Phoebe wants Francesca to follow in that path. But while Francesca does want to continue her ballet studies, Frankie has also joined the Percaucus Pups Little League team, without her grandmother's knowledge. Meanwhile, Hazel has decided to clean up the town, running for mayor against the hapless incumbent who has been in office for 22 years.

Summary: Französisch für Anfänger tells the story of Hendrik, who takes part in a student exchange program with France. The only reason for this journey is to conquer the heart of his dream girl. Wild parties, exciting trips, a crazy host family and of course his trouble with the French language turn the holidays into a memorable summer.

Summary: Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on a East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie...

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 5.1

Comments: Get Your Freak On August 1st

Summary: An overworked mother and her daughter do not get along. When they switch bodies, each is forced to adapt to the others life for one freaky Friday.

Languages: English, French

Comments: Annabel isn't herself today - neither is her mother this morning. They became each other!

Summary: A mother and daughter find their personalities switched and have to live each other's lives on one strange Friday.

Summary: Frida, aged 13, has discovered a book by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm called "The art of loving". Using it as a reference she sets out to better the love lives of her family and friends. But love works in mysterious ways...

Comments: who needs the world when you own the moon and stars.

Summary: In this teen romance, a young neglected English boy (Sean Bury) runs away and becomes friends with a French girl (Anicée Alvina) in the same plight. Together, they go to an idyllic seaside location in France (the Camargue), become lovers, set up housekeeping, have a baby, and play at being responsible adults, discovering along the way many of the troubles involved before ultimately becoming separated by the boy's parents.

Summary: Frode can't wait for the big summer party at his apartment building. Most of all because this year's party offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to ride a real live elephant. Then, in a stunning reversal, the stickler super informs them there is a fee for use of the yard, and Frode's dream of riding an elephant vanishes before his eyes. Meanwhile, poor Mr. Storm downstairs is plagued by a string of mysterious burglaries and offers a reward to whoever catches the culprit. Frode and his friends jump to the challenge: nab the burglar, trick the super to get their party back – and outwit their rivals, the dirty rotten basement gang.

Languages: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono

Summary: The story of the passionate romance between 19th century composer Robert Schumann and the introduction to his muse, Clara Wieck, and her overprotective, posessive father. Clara would become the concert pianist who introduced many of Schumann's compositions to the world.

Languages: German, Swedish

Comments: Jag ska aldrig mer bli ihop med nån. Jag ska bli celibat.

Summary: Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

Summary: Born in a poor neighborhood, Tony hides hides behind the image of a tough woman. She has a boyfriend, Juanjo, and two pals, a strange couple formed by Maxi, who is obsessed with martial arts, and moco, a terminal junkie. They all decide to hold up a Lottery Administration in Madrid. But Juanjo has another plan: he's going to betray his two friends and escape with Tony and the money. They start their runaway to the South with the excuse of taking Laura, Juanjo's seven year old niece, to see her father, a flamenco singer. But at the beginning of the trip, with Maxi, Moco and the police on their tail, Tony is betrayed by her boyfriend who disappears with the money, abandoning her and Laura in a dismal road side restaurant. With their pursuers close behind them, Tony and Laura are forced to keep running. In the course of their journey, the initial distrust between them will turn into a deep friendship.

Summary: Bonnie and Hillary are two young lost souls who meet one day and discover that they get along. They talk about their lives and run around and and keep getting really excited. Their day escalates into an eruption of violence and rage that can only be understood by the two girls.

Comments: Ein Kind, zwei Frauen. Ein Kampf auf Liebe und Tod.

Summary: Five years ago, the unmarried mother Melanie Brunnhauser had surrendered her daughter Maria to foster parents. Now, she is married and demands the return of Maria, whom she has never seen again since her birth, regardless of the relationship which has built up between the child and her fosterparents in the meantime. She uses toys, sweet talk, a puppy dog and all means possible to manipulate Maria whenever she can be caught off guard. From then on, a nightmarish war begins between the two mothers. A child can easily be manipulated.. or not?