This is England. (United Kingdom, 2006) 27/09/2012

Largely based on director´s (Shane Meadows) own personal experience, the film tells the story of Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), a 11 year old kid growing up in the North of England. Set during the summer holidays of 1983. It follows his journay from a shaggy haired rufian grieving the loss of his father into a shaven headed thug whose anger and pain are embraced by the local skinhead fraternity.

The film was well acclaimed and it got several awards, for instance Alexander Korda for the Best Film at the British Academy Film Award.
"The writer-director brilliantly juxtaposes the personal and the political, bookending a stirring coming-of-age drama with the provocative opening and an equally affecting end sequence." Kevin Thomas. Los Ángeles Times. 02/08/2007.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jkv2bRFgQ

Babette´s Feast (Denmark, 1987) 20/09/2012

This Danish Film was directed by Gabriel Axel. It was based on a short story by Isak Dinisen (pen name of Karen Blixen) and tells the story of Babette Hersant (Stéphane Audran), a French woman who works for two pious sisters, Martina  (Birgette Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer) in a small village on the remote western coast of Jutland in 19th-century. Sometime after their father´s death, the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Babette experiences unexpected good fortune and implores the sisters to allow her to take charge of the preparetion of the meal.



The film received almost universally positive reviews and it won the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. It also won a BAFTA Film Award for the Best Not in English Language.
"Taking a longish tale, "Babette´s Feast, from Isak Dinisen´s last collection "Anecdotes of Destiny"  (1958), Gabriel Axel has made a  very handsome, very literary movie". Vicent Canby. New York Times. 01/10/1988.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=fDbQ6ktcFPQ

Departures (Japan 2008) 131´ 28/06/2012

This film was directed by Yōjirō Takita and tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist in Tokyo who loses his job when his orchestra is disbanded. This mishap makes him  move back to his hometown, Sakata, with his wife Mika (Ryōko Hirosue). There Daigo finds a job that involves preparing the dead.

It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Oscars in 2009 and the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year at the 32nd Japan Academy Prize. Apart from that it has received good reviews.
"Even as it gently insists on the normalcy, the inevitability, the meaningfulness of mortality, it leaves you feeling so familiar with death you may want to wash your hands and change your clothes afterward." Philip Kennicott. Washington Post. (19/06/2009).
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtdENmR6jKw

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (USA 2004) 109´ 07/06/2012

Michel Gondry directed this film that tells the story of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), a couple who decides to undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
 
The film has been well acclaimed by critics.
"Works marvel after marvel in expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one's own addled mind, and in allegorising the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart." Jessica Winter. Time out. (26/01/2006)
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GiLxkDK8sI

Midnight Express (USA 1978) 121´31/05/2012

Midnight Express was directed by Alan Parker and it is the harrowing story of Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), a young American tourist condemned to a Turkish prison for his futile attempt to struggel hashish out of the country. Made an example of by a corrupt legal system and a victim of ineffectual diplomacy, Hayes is sentenced to 30 years and must overcome ruthless brutality and his own descent into madness in order to survive.

The film won Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score (Giorgio Moroder) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Oliver Stone).
"A solid prison film that feels so real that if you heard a voiceover you'd swear it was a documentary". James Plath. Movie Metropolis. 19/07/2009.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAY4aADKk08

Please be aware that the film contains strong sex and violence.

Nights of Cabiria (Italy. 1957) 117´ 24/05/2012

This film, that is considered the Federico Fellini´s last foray into gritty neo-realism, tells the story of Cabiria (Giulietta Masina), a wide-eyed prostitute who earns her living in the unforgiving streets of a crumbling Rome. In a world of episodic adventures and strange encounters, the main character dreams with a better life.


Since its release, the film has been acclaimed and nowadays is a classic. It won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Giulietta Massina got the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival for her performance as Cabiria, one of the most unforgettable and endearing characters the history of the cinema.
"Through Masina's unforgettable performance, Cabiria will endure as long as anyone cares to watch transcendence projected on a screen". Kenneth Turan. Los Ángeles Times. 13/02/2001
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfy2GAppCSM&feature=endscreen

The cuckoo (Russia 2002) 100´ 17/05/2012

THE CUCKOO, from Russian director Alexander Rogozhkin, is a seriously funny comedy about the universal human values that lie underneath both, language and culture. The film looks at the unexpected friendship between three people from different countries at the end of World War II. A Finn soldier, Veiko (Ville Khaapasalo), a Lapp woman, Anni (Anni-khristiina Juuso), and a Russian soldier, Ivan (Vicktor Bychkov), come very close together although they are unable to speak each other's languages. As expected, the "dialogues" are rather incoherent as the three characters continuously misinterpret each other, which is the main source of the funniest moments in the film. Beyond the language barriers however, they manage to communicate love peace and understanding to one another.

The film won a lot of prizes in different Independent Film Festivals, including Best Film and Director at the 2003 Europa Cinema in Viarego, Italy.

"Mr. Rogozhkin maintains a good sense of blood, dirt and sweat, human elements mingled together to keep the action rooted in some degree of reality." Dave Kher. New York Times. 10/07/2003

See the trailer:http://www.moviemaze.de/media/trailer/868,the-cuckoo.html

Missing (United States 1982) 122´ 10/05/2012

This film by Costa Gavras is based on a true story. In the aftermath of the US-backed Chilean coup of 1973 that deposed leftist President Salvador Allende, the American journalist Charles Horman (John Shea) disappears. His wife (Sissy Spacek) and his father (Jack Lemmon) start a search to determine his fate, their efforts will meet with the duplicity by US embassy officials in Santiago.

Missing won the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. The film also won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival,  where Lemmon was awarded Best Actor for his performance.
^"And the best scenes in MISSING (...) are the ones in which Spacek and Lemmon hack their way through a bureaucratic jungle in an attempt to get someone to make a simple statement of fact. Those scenes are masterful." Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times. 23/10/2004.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7rMVneWfto

Hidden (France, 2005) 117´. 26/04/2012.

Michael Haneke directed Hidden. The film tells the story of Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a successful host of a French literary TV programme, who lives with his wife Anne ( Juliette Binoche), a book publisher, and their school-age son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). The quiet life of this Paris family is disturbed when they receive a series of surveillance tapes of their own residence from an anonymous source. This tapes show extended observation of their home's exterior from a static street camera that is never noticed. At first passive and harmless, but later accompanied by crude, disturbing crayon drawings, the tapes lead to questions about Georges' early life that disrupt both his work and marriage.


The film was a success. It won several prizes: Best Director at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and Best European Actor at the 2005 European Film Awards among them. It was also highly acclaimed by the critics.
"Don't bother getting comfortable when you sit down for Michael Haneke's Hidden (Cache). Soon as this quietly terrifying film starts, the unease starts to fester." Matthew Leyland. BBC. 23/01/2006.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w0J9myz14I

Agora. (Spain 2006) 126´. 19/04/2012. Science Festival in Edinburgh.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
A pale blue dot. Carl Sagan. 1994.

Being inspired by the TV serie Cosmos by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, Alejandro Amenábar directed Agora. The biopic stars Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, a female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in late 4th century Roman Egypt, a transforamtive and tumultuous period that was in many ways (cultural, social, religious and political) the end of the Ancient History.



The film was controversional.
"I went to see "Agora" expecting an epic with swords, sandals and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more. This is a movie about ideas, a drama based on the ancient war between science and superstition." Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times. 22/07/2010.
See the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbuEhwselE0

Be ware that the film contains some violent scenes.