World Cinema

An 80-year-old Kolkata retiree is on a mission to get his neighborhood streetlights turned off at sunrise after he notices they stay on all day. Shyamal Uncle finds his sense of propriety upset by this wasteful expense of electricity. But finding someone to take him seriously proves a battle against an indifferent bureaucracy and a complacent status quo (and is just maybe a welcome distraction from his otherwise dull routine).

Premiering at Cannes, Reality garnered director Matteo Garrone a second Grand Prix award, after his first came in 2008 for Gomorrah.

In this satirical black comedy, the easily excitable and arrogant Luciano dreams of joining the cast of Italy’s ‘Big Brother,’ but ultimately winds up alienated and jaded. The support Luciano receives from his family and community goes straight to his head, and, after a prank by his brother goes horribly wrong, his high hopes come crashing down.

Based on a best-selling novel by Finnish-Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen, which has been translated into 38 languages, won multiple prizes and spawned an opera, Finnish director Antti Jokinen’s Oscar-submitted screen adaptation is a gripping, polished hybrid of contemporary thriller and historical melodrama.

“Curiously engaging and wickedly twisted tale of crime and punishment...recalls the like-minded outlook of No Country For Old Men.” —Indiewire. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, Pieta is the acclaimed film from the celebrated and controversial Korean director Kim Ki-Duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring; 3-Iron). In this intense and haunting story, a brutal loan shark mercilessly collecting debts meets a mysterious person who asks him to leave his violent life behind.

After a bomb goes off at a busy downtown bank in 1969 Milan, conspiracy theories quickly mar the attempts of the police to track down the guilty parties. Based on a true story, Piazza Fontana closely follows Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, who is under constant pressure to file charges, even if it’s against an innocent man. Piazza Fontana won the Special Jury Prize at Karlovy Vary for its intoxicating sets and scenery as well as its restrained, emotional acting.

A group of gay activists in Belgrade strikes a tense alliance with a Serbian crime boss, whose fiancée demands an extravagant wedding that only struggling gay theater director Mirko and his friends can provide. In exchange, Macho the Boss reluctantly agrees to provide security for the group’s Pride parade. It’s a tall order: previous attempts to march met with mass violence from right-wing skinheads.

Successful businessman Harry Papadopoulos loses all his money and assets in the worst financial crash in London’s history—that is everything except an abandoned fish and chips shop that he co-owns with his burnout brother Spyros. With nothing else to lose, and with a lot of convincing from his family, Harry reluctantly agrees to re-open the same shop that kick-started his career. This unpretentious crowd-pleaser delivers spectacularly on its promise of pure cinematic joy.

In the farming plains of Tibet, a sheepherder sells the family dog, a Tibetan mastiff, which angers his father who demands he finds the dog and bring it back home. In such poor conditions, dogs like the Tibetan mastiff are worth a fortune, but, for this family, the dog is worth much more than any money can buy. Old Dog captures the evolving Tibetan society through this tale of a family caught between old traditions and economic realities.

Leila and Kaveh are a mysterious pair from Tehran, traveling the mountainous countryside in their Lexus coupe to push big bags of money on the locals. This turns out to be not so easy, but fascinating to watch, as the cagey couple invent increasingly brazen stratagems to place cash in the hands of the wary, proud or indifferent. Will they push things too far? Are they losing sight of their mission? What exactly is their mission?

An emotional tale of unlikely friendship, Avie Luthra’s film follows Lucky, a recently orphaned boy in post-apartheid South Africa, who strikes up in unlikely relationship with an elderly Indian immigrant who harbors racial resentment toward her neighbors. While the odds are staggeringly against him, Lucky is determined to get an education, and, after learning that there are government stipends for those housing orphans of AIDS victims, Padma reluctantly agrees to assist him.