On DVD: Summer 2012

Kyrgyzstan’s official submission to the 2010 Academy Awards

Synopsis In this colorful modern-day parable of good and evil, a humble village electrician devotes his compassion and ingenuity to destitute neighbors in a wind-swept valley of Kyrgyzstan. Played with wry humanity by writer-director Aktan Arym Kubat, the trusting Mr. Light strikes a suspect bargain with a rich developer running for local office, as unemployment threatens the survival of the community. Stoking a dream to supply wind-generated electricity to the whole valley, the modest visionary comes up against an increasingly dark cloud of corruption in this affecting tale of solidarity and ordinary decency amid the injustices and hardships of a changing world.

About the Director Aktan Arym Kubat was born in 1957 in Kyrgyzstan. He graduated from the Art Academy in Bishkek and started working as a production designer in the 1980s. His second feature film, The Swing, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1993, which was followed by The Adopted Son, which won the Silver Leopard at the same festival in 1998. In 2001, he was nominated for the European Film Academy (EFA) Discovery Award. The Light Thief is his fifth feature film.

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Featured in the Global Lens 2011 film series.

Synopsis Hamro, an unrepentant prodigal son straight out of a Russian jail, returns to his hometown to help his mother die with dignity. But his debts are many and long overdue, the townspeople are tough as nails, and he gets more than he expected from the quiet village. In this dark comedy, his third feature, writer-director Djamshed Usmonov casts the town's population as its own persuasive self and his own mother and brother as the fractured yet formidable domestic couple.

About the Director Born in Asht, Tajikistan in 1965, Djamshed Usmonov graduated from the Theater Department at Dushanbe Fine Arts School in Tajikistan. He has been working in the film industry since 1986 as a director, producer, screenwriter, and an editor for fiction, animation and documentary films. He worked predominantly at the Tajikfilm Studio in Dushanbe. Djamshed has also appeared as an actor in 1990's "Yellow Grass Time" (dir. Mariam Yussupova, Tajikistan) and 2000's "The Road" (dir. Darezhan Omirbaev, Kazakhstan). He currently lives between Paris, Moscow and Tajikistan.

Available Screening Formats 35mm, DVD. Digibeta available upon request

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Featured in the Global Lens 2004 film series.

ON DVD: Spring/Winter 2013

Synopsis Writer-director Zhang Lu’s fascinating window into a rarely seen corner of rural China revolves around 12-year-old Chang-ho, living with his grandfather and mute sister along the frozen river-border with North Korea. Although fraught with unemployment and other tensions, his community seems sympathetic toward the Korean refugees fleeing famine and misery; Chang-ho even bonds over soccer with one young border-crosser who comes scavenging food for a sibling. But he soon turns on his new friend as suspicions mount against the illegal immigrants and his sister reels from unexpected aggression, provoking a quandary over his loyalties in an exquisitely detailed story of compassion and strife across an uneasy geopolitical border.

About the Director Zhang Lu was born in Jilin-Sheng, China in 1962. He studied Chinese literature at Yenben University and began writing poetry and novels in 1986. He made his feature debut with Tang Poetry in 2004, and his second feature film, Grain in Ear, was invited to the 2005 Critics’ Week in Cannes, where it won the ACID/CCAS Support Award. Dooman River is his fifth feature film.

Available Screening Formats 35mm, DVD. Digibeta available upon request.

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DVD Release Date: October 2012

Featured in the Global Lens 2011 film series.

Brazil’s official submission to the 2006 Academy Awards

Synopsis 1942 in the middle of Northeastern Brazil, two very different men meet along the road: Johan, an aspirin salesman avoiding the German draft, and Ranulpho, a rural Brazilian seeking escape from the drought. Although their personalities and lives are worlds apart, the two men develop a deep friendship, as Johan, in an effort to provide Ranulpho with job skills, teaches Ranulpho to run the film projector, and drive a truck. In this deliberately-paced road film, Marcelo Gomes reminds us that war is as close as Johan's radio, broadcasting its relentless warnings that all lives are changed when the world is in conflict.

About the Director Marcelo Gomes was born in Recife, in Northeastern Brazil. He studied filmmaking at Bristol University in the United Kingdom and produced his first short, Maracutu Maracutus in 1994. He produced the documentaries Punk, Rock, Hard Core (1996) and Expresso Brazil (1997). Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures (2004), his first feature film, received a Special Jury Prize and Best Actor Award (Joao Miguel) at the 2005 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.

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ON DVD: Fall/Winter 2012

Synopsis Set against the backdrop of Argentina’s military regime of the 1980s, Diego Lerman’s engrossing and beautifully acted exploration of the totalitarian urge opens with a portrait of María Teresa, a lonely and deeply repressed assistant teacher at an elite Buenos Aires private school. Obedient and willing, she accepts unquestioningly the school’s rigid code of conduct and proud identification with the nation state. But her head professor’s words about the “cancer of subversion” and need for total surveillance soon feed an unhealthy obsession with one of her students, leading to an ensuing spiral of degradation and breakdown in discipline that parallels a popular rebellion beyond the school’s ivy-covered walls.

About the Director Diego Lerman was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. He graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he studied cinema and theater. In 2002, he directed his first feature film, Suddenly, which was awarded the Silver Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. In 2008, he co-founded the production company Campo Cine with Nicolas Avruj. The Invisible Eye is his third feature film.

Available Screening Formats 35mm, DVD. Digibeta available upon request.

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DVD Release Date: June 2012

Featured in the Global Lens 2011 film series.

Synopsis Set in war-torn Algeria in the 1990s, Enough! follows two women on the dangerous search for the younger woman's husband, a journalist whose writings resulted in his disappearance. Both women represent anachronisms in Islamist Algeria: the younger woman is a doctor, the older a nurse with vivid memories of Algeria's fight for independence. Ignoring curfews and the constant threat of ambush by armed militias, the two women challenge the men they encounter to accept them and help them with their search. Their journey leads them across the picturesque landscapes of Algeria, to a deeper understanding of how their lives were shaped by their country's history.

About the Director Djamila Sahraoui was born in Algeria in 1950, and has lived in France since 1975. After studying literature in Algeria, she studied filmmaking at l'IDHEC in Paris. Her early short films include Houria (1980), Avoir 2000 ans dans les Aurès (1990), and Prénom Marianne (1992). Sahraoui's documentaries, La Moitié du ciel d'Allah (1995), Algérie, la vie quand même (1998) and Algérie, la vie toujours (2001), explore conditions in Algeria during the decade of civil war. She was awarded the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs prize in 1997. Enough! is her first feature film.

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Synopsis A new national law allowing conjugal visits for inmates brings together a man and woman visiting the same prison to meet their incarcerated spouses. Elsa’s dutiful contact with her husband is part of a routine consumed with job searching, raising her two sons, and getting along with her father-in-law. When she meets Spetim, a quiet man visiting his imprisoned wife in equally passionless encounters, they slowly find the sympathy and companionship missing from their lives. A prisoner amnesty, however, soon threatens their fragile bond in this closely observed, sensual and contemplative drama highlighting a period of subtle but profound social transformation.

About the Director Bujar Alimani was born in Patos, Albania in 1969. He studied painting and stage directing at the University of Arts in Tirana, Albania, then worked as an assistant director in film after immigrating to Greece in 1992. His debut short film, The Kennel, won the Best Balkan Film Award at the International Short Film Festival in Drama, Greece in 2002, and the Best Albanian Short Film Award at the Tirana International Film Festival in 2003. Amnesty is his first feature film.

Available Screening Formats 35mm, DVD. Digibeta available upon request.

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Featured in the Global Lens 2012 film series.

Synopsis A story of ethnic conflict between Kurds and Iraqis in the context of the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. The central story of the film is set at a time when Kurds were conscripted to serve in the Iraqi army, where they were brutally abused, as a despised minority in Saddam Hussein's military. Kilometre Zero pairs a Kurdish soldier, under orders to return the body of a dead soldier to his family, with an Iraqi taxi driver who will drive them cross-country to the dead soldier's home. Scenes between the men, in the close quarters of their truck, are interwoven with scenes of often comic incompetence of Iraqi soldiers and officers.

About the Director Hiner Saleem was born in Acna, Iraqi Kurdistan, in 1954. He fled to Italy by way of Syria in 1971, to escape the oppression of Saddam Hussein, and has lived in Paris for the past ten years. He is a fervent advocate for the rights of the Kurdish people, and regards April 9, 2003, the day of the fall of Saddam Hussein, as the most beautiful day of his life. Saleem was honored as Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the government of France in 2005. His films include Beyond Our Dreams (2000), and Vodka Lemon (2003), for which he won the Contro Corrente Grand Prize at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. His Long Live the Bride...and the Liberation of Kurdistan (1997) won the prize for best script at the Angers Film Festival. Kilometre Zero (2005) was selected for competition at the Festival Cannes 2005.

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Synopsis Set in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, this radiantly self-referential film-within-a-film describes the vision and trials of a determined filmmaker named Balthazar, as he tries to produce his first feature, The Cycle of the Cockroach. The trenchant drama, about a brother and sister dealing with the aftermath of genocide, finds no support from agencies only interested in funding upbeat policy-friendly films. As Balthazar borrows recklessly from a loan shark, the Cycle plays out on the screen, subtly measuring the horror and systematic madness of events hardly unique to Rwanda, while offering bracing insight into the nature of political violence.

About the Director Kivu Ruhorahoza was born in Kigali, Rwanda in 1982. A self-taught filmmaker, he won the award for Best African Short at Montreal’s 25th Pan African International Film Festival and Best Short at the Kenya International Film Festival in 2009 for his short film, Lost in the South. He has also produced an experimental documentary, Rwanda 15, with New York saxophonist Jeremy Danneman for the Parade of One project. Grey Matter is his first feature film and the first feature-length narrative film produced in Rwanda by a native Rwandan filmmaker.

Available Screening Formats DVD, Digibeta.

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Featured in the Global Lens 2012 film series.