Ane’s life takes a turn when a bouquet of flowers is delivered to her house every week. Always at the same time and always anonymously. Lourdes and Tere’s lives are also affected by some mysterious flowers. A stranger leaves a weekly bouquet in memory of someone important in their lives. This is the story of three women, three lives altered by the mere presence of bouquets of flowers. Flowers that will make feelings blossom inside them that had seemed long forgotten… But in the end, they are nothing more than flowers.
Marshland is set in 1980 Spain’s deep south, just after the end of Franco’s brutal dictatorship. In a small village frozen in time – surrounded by a labyrinth of marshlands and rice paddies – a serial killer has taken residence and caused the disappearance of several adolescents that no one seems to have missed.
When two young sisters disappear during an annual festival, their mother forces an investigation that brings two homicide detectives from Madrid to try and solve the mystery.
Director Alice Rohrwacher’s richly textured sophomore feature centers on a family of beekeepers living in stark isolation in central Italy.
The dynamic of their overcrowded household is disrupted by the simultaneous arrival of a silently troubled teenaged boy taken in as a farmhand, and a production crew recruiting local farmers to participate in a cheesy televised celebration of ancient Etruscan culture presented by the mysterious Milly Catena (Monica Bellucci).
Both intrusions are of particular interest to the eldest daughter, Gelsomina, who is struggling to find her footing in the world, and Rohrwacher manages to convey her adolescent sense of wonder and confusion with characteristically graceful naturalism.
WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX at the Cannes Film Festival 2014
Starring Monica Bellucci, Alba Rohrwacher, and Maria Alexandra Lungu.
Three hours outside of Addis Ababa, a bright 14-year-old girl is on her way home from school when men on horses swoop in and kidnap her. The brave Hirut grabs a rifle and tries to escape, but ends up shooting her would-be husband. In her village, the practice of abduction into marriage is common and one of Ethiopia’s oldest traditions. Meaza Ashenafi, an empowered and tenacious young lawyer, arrives from the city to represent Hirut and argue that she acted in self-defense. Meaza boldly embarks on a collision course between enforcing civil authority and abiding by customary law, risking the ongoing work of her women’s legal-aid practice to save Hirut’s life.
Hannah and Tahir (Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Mackie) come from two different worlds. But when their lives intersect, they’re at the same place: homeless on the streets of New York. How did they get there? As we learn about their past, we begin to understand that to have a future, they need each other. There are more than 50,000 homeless people living on the streets and in the shelters of New York City. To most of us they are nameless and faceless, and occasionally a nuisance. But every single person has a story. And Hannah and Tahir are no different. And theirs is a story of loss, love, hope and redemption.
When nutritional scientist and author T. Colin Campbell inspires Kentucky State Representative Tom Riner to propose a pilot program documenting the health benefits of a plant-based diet, they inadvertently set in motion a series of events that expose powerful forces opposed to the diet. When industry lobbyists kill the pilot program, Dr. Campbell’s oldest son Nelson decides to try his own grassroots approach in his hometown of Mebane, North Carolina.
Starring Kristen Wiig, Sebastian Silva, and Tunde Adebimpe. The film centers on a Brooklyn couple, Freddy (Silva) and his boyfriend Mo (Adebimpe), who are trying to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly (Wiig). The film follows the trio as they navigate the idea of creating life while confronted by growing harassment from a menacing local known as ‘The Bishop.’ As things take a dark turn, their joyous pursuit of parenthood is suddenly clouded.
Gisela Adamski is a recent high school graduate, a grandmother, and a Holocaust survivor. Gisela shares her legacy through 17-year-old Jamie McNeill’s short documentary, followed by a discussion with Gisela and her family moderated by Dr. Harold Schwartz, Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Institute of Living.
A dozen combat vets return home to the United States haunted by traumatic memories from the battlefield. Wives, children, and parents bear the brunt of their fractured spirits. At The Pathway Home — a pioneering PTSD therapy center — these war vets try to resolve their debilitating mental conditions. A Vietnam vet therapist helps these men attempt to make peace with themselves, their past, and their families.
Paradise is There revisits Merchant’s multi-platinum solo debut, Tigerlily, originally released in 1995. The new release is accompanied by a memoir-style documentary film containing live performances, archival footage, and interviews with musicians, friends and fans about the influence the songs of Tigerlily have had over the past 20 years. The film encapsulates Merchant’s entire musical life, and dives deep, song by song, into Tigerlily through the impassioned words of fans, fellow musicians, and Merchant herself. The film is as much an exploration of Merchant’s music as it is the power of music itself to affect us in profound, lasting, and uplifting ways.
Internationally-acclaimed and exiled Iranian director Jafar Panahi (This is Not a Film) drives a yellow cab through the vibrant streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse (and yet representative) group of passengers in a single day. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses his or her own view of the world, while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver/director.
His camera, placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio, captures a spirited slice of Iranian society while also brilliantly redefining the borders of comedy, drama and cinema. Taxi is a gently rebellious film, a blend of documentary and narrative that riffs on the contentious life of the artist in modern Iran.
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Taxi is another modern classic from master director Jafar Panahi.
Morning Edition discusses Taxi: http://www.npr.org/2015/10/08/446833267/jafar-panahi-s-latest-film-taxi-is-shot-where-iranians-can-talk-freely
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.
Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it to therefore be his rightful property.
**The Skype Q&A with Director Bryan Carberry has been cancelled due to Election Night.
Francois Ozon’s humorous psychological drama The New Girlfriend stars Anais Demoustier as Claire, a young woman whose closest friend since childhood, Laura, passes away leaving behind a husband, David (Romain Duris) and a newborn baby. One day she drops by David’s house unexpectedly, and finds him dressed in his dead wife’s clothes and feeding their baby with a bottle, which leads to confusing and conflicting feelings in Claire, and causes a rift between Claire and her husband (Raphael Personnaz). The New Girlfriend screened at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Plot: Captured French Resistance fighter Andre Devigny awaits a certain death sentence for espionage in a stark Nazi prison. Facing malnourishment and paralyzing fear, he must engineer an extraordinary escape, complicated by the questions of whom to trust, and in the absence of options, how to kill.
Conversation: Crime stories make for great soundscapes: the need for silence, the sudden breakage of glass, the “close-up” mic on professionals at work. Here, Robert Bresson uses sound textures and rhythms to build remarkable tension—to create a world just outside the locked door. We’ll discuss “realism” and “rendered” soundscapes, the idea of “extension,” and more.
Peace Officer is a feature documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of William “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later. Driven by an obsessed sense of mission, Dub uses his own investigative skills to uncover the truth in this and other recent officer involved shootings in his community while tackling larger questions about the changing face of peace officers nationwide.
