Fantasy/Folktale/Fairytale

The much lauded and often controversial auteur, Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard), splinters and reconstructs another fairy tale with her latest exploration into female mythologies.

In this dreamlike yet earthbound film, Rahmat the boatman navigates the increasingly brackish waters of a coastal land, collecting the heartaches and tears of its inhabitants. But he remains powerless against their misguided attempts to appease the gods and make the land green again, whether by offering a bride to the sea or forcibly “treating” the eyes of a painter who sees in different colors. Drawing firsthand on the challenges faced by Iranian artists of today, writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof’s deeply atmospheric and poetical film is a gorgeous allegory of intolerance, brutality and mystified routine that resonates far beyond any one state’s borders.

In a hushed medieval village on a hilltop in southern Italy, an elderly shepherd tends his flock. He is sick and his days are numbered, but a daily glass of water mixed with the church floor’s dust is his medicine. As day-to-day living pushes ever forward, the cosmic interconnectedness of all things is slowly revealed in this shifting portrait of an isolated Calabrian village, populated by bleating goats who run loose through the houses and fields.