A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Austria

Original title: Der Wadenmesser oder Das Wilde Leben des Wolfgang Mozart  (2005)

English title: The Measuring Of The Calves OR The Wild Life Of Wolfgang Mozart

Director: Kurt Palm

Language:  German with English subtitles

Running time:  90 Minutes

Cast: Chrono Popp, Andreas Karner, the Accordion Ensamble of Graz, Georg Schulz & Mario Garzaner, Otto Lechner, Kadero Ray, Prinz Eugen Ensamble, hip-hop group Texta

In his portrait THE MEASURING OF THE CALVES, OR THE WILD LIFE OF WOLFGANG MOZART, Palm approaches Wolfgang "Amadeus" Mozart in an extremely unusual way. In addition to music, Mozart's life revolved around movement and travel, and so Palm takes his audience into the air, across the countryside and under water on two routes often used by Mozart with his family and later his wife: from his birthplace, Salzburg, to the city where he died, Vienna.

At the beginning of the film the director clears up the matter of the Amadeus myth: While Mozart gave himself a number of different names, including "Wolfgang de Mozart; Wolfgang in Teütschland; Amadeo de Mozartini in Italia; Wolfgango in Germania; Gnagflow Trazom; Franz von Nosebleed; Wolfgang Romatz, Lord von Pigdick" and many, many others, he certainly never used Amadeus.

BELGIUM

Original title:  Mobutu -  Roi Du Zaire (1999)

English title: Mobutu - King Of Zaire

Director: Thierry Michel

Language: French with English subtitles

Running time:   135 minutes

Cast:  Alain Marcoen, Joël Marcipont, Didier Hill Derive

This film is the result of more than two years of work tracking down archive material and witnesses close to Mobutu in Africa, Europe and the U.S. More than 950 hours of footage have been seen by the world. Among the 104 hours selected as the basis for this film, are 30 hours of archives recently discovered in Kinshasa and never before released.  Completing these exceptional documents, are more than 50 hours of interviews with those close to the former president and the events surrounding his reign, conducted by the director in Kinshasa, Brussels, Paris and Washington.

Like a vast historical puzzle, this film pieces together the tragic history of a country, and its self-styled leader - the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, 'King of Zaire'.

Mobutu is a character of tragedy and a symbol. In the tropical heat of Congo/Zaire, he embodies the barbarity of tyrants and a caricature of power.  A skilful tactician, now charismatic and seductive, now short-tempered and fearful, he uses the division of his opponents as a formidable weapon.  Because of Mobutu´s unending quest for esteem and glory, he allows us to unravel the mechanism of power directly, without needing to equivocate or resort to fiction.  The dramatic content is drawn from film records and speeches made by the character to the whole world.  

Mobutu is carried away by a folly that makes him cruelly dramatic.  He is a monster, yet he has principles and reasons that determine the course of his actions.  And he is human, all too human, somehow like each one of us.  Mobutu is also an actor, an historical actor, making and breaking the destinies of peoples and nations; a theatre actor, constantly directing his own role in all kinds registers; tragic, epic, comic... even risking to appear as the fool.  Half man and half animal, he chose the title of Leopard for himself, a forest animal combining the agility and craftiness of a fox with the force and cruelty of a lion.  This made his reign both a dupe´s comedy and a bloody tragedy in a classical and almost Shakespearean style.

The Czech Republic

Original title:  Tmavomodrý svet  (2001)  

English title: Dark Blue World

Director:  Jan Sverák

Language: Czech with English subtitles

Running time: 108 minutes

Cast: Ondrej Vetchý, Krystof Hádek, Tara Fitzgerald,Karel Vojtíšek

The film proper begins in 1939, just days prior to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. After the invasion, the Czechoslovakian army is disbanded and the Czechoslovaks have to give up their aircraft. However, Franta and the younger Karel, among others, refuse to submit to their occupiers, and flee to the United Kingdom to join the RAF.

Once they arrive, the British force the Czechoslovaks to retrain from the basics which infuriates them. Eventually they are allowed to fly but after their first sortie they realise why the British were training them so intensely: a young Czechoslovak nicknamed Tom Tom is shot down by a Messerschmitt Bf-109.

In the same mission, Karel himself is shot down but manages to safely crash land and find his way to a farm. At this farm he meets Susan whom he falls in love with (though the feeling is not mutual; Susan thinks Karel is far too young). The next day, after returning to the aerodrome, Karel brings Franta to meet Susan. The latter begins to get on well with Susan, though Karel believes that he is still Susan's boyfriend.

Following a mission to France where the squadron attacks a train, Karel is shot down and Franta lands to rescue him, a move that shows that the two's friendship endures. But soon after the mission, Karel learns about the relationship between Franta and Susan which leads to a quarrel.

A few missions later, Franta's airplane has a malfunction and is forced to ditch into the ocean. His inflatable life raft bursts as he tries to inflate it and Karel decides to help him by giving him his own rescue boat. While attempting to drop the boat, Karel collides with water surface and dies. (But the boat emerges on the water, so Franta is rescued.)

The movie ends with Franta returning to Czechoslovakia, where he finds his girlfriend married.

Finland

Title:  Mother of Mine (2005)  

Director: Klaus Härö

Language:  Swedish with English subtitles

Running time: 111 minutes

Cast:   Topi Majaniemi, Marjaana Maijala, Maria Lundqvist, Michael Nyqvist, Esko Salminen, Aino-Maija Tikkanen ja  Kari-Pekka Toivonen

This is a story about a small boy who had two mothers and yet had none. In 1943, in a war-torn Finland, 9-year-old Eero´s father is killed on the front. Eero´s mother makes the painful decision to send her only child to safety in neutral Sweden.

In Sweden, Eero´s foster mother, Signe, welcomes him to her home but not to her heart. Eero doesn´t speak any Swedish and feels unwelcome in his foster family while missing his mother terribly. All the long-awaited letters from his mother are addressed to Signe, not to him. One day Eero accidentally discovers a letter which he never was supposed to read.

During the Second World War over 70,000 war children were sent from Finland to Sweden, Denmark and Norway in the biggest evacuation of children ever undertaken in the world. Mother of Mine, by award-winning director Klaus Härö is the first feature-length film ever made about the fate of an individual war child.

Awards received:  

• Nordische Filmtage, Lübeck, Germany, 3.–6.11.2005
• 29th Cairo International Film Festival, Egypt, 29.11.–9.12.2005

       Main award: Golden Pyramid
       Best Director (Klaus Härö)
       Best Actress (Maria Lundqvist)

• Satellite Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 17.12.2005
• 17th Palm Springs International Film Festival, CA, USA, 5.–16.1.2006

       Audience Award (shared)

• B-ucharEst International Film Festival, Romania, 27.3.–2.4.2006

        Best Script

• Festroia, Sétubal, Portugal, 2.–11.6.2006

       Silver Dolphin for Best Actor (Topi Majaniemi)
       Silver Dolphin for Best Actress (Maria Lundqvist)

• Giffoni Film Festival, Italy, 15.–22.7.2006

       Jury Grand Prix in Free to Fly Series (Age Group 12–14)

FRANCE

Original title: Au coeur du Festival  ( 2004)

English title: Heart of the Festival

Director: Gilles Jacob

Language: French with English subtitles

Running time: 160 minutes

An anthology of the greatest moments of the Cannes Film Festival by its President, Gilles Jacob. The Cannes Film Festival lifts the curtain on historical backstage secrets and events in an exceptional 3-part compilation. Three separate movies which, thanks to their star-studded cast, form a passionate and moving history of the Festival. This film offers a unique opportunity to enjoy again, to witness unforgettable images of major stars, and to hear the greatest moviemakers in the history of cinema discuss the secrets of their art...

GERMANY

Original title:  die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman  (2001)

English title: THE MANNS - Novel of a century

Director: Heinrich Breloer

Language: German with English subtitles

Running time: 312 minutes

Cast:  Armin Mueller-Stahl, Monica Bleibtreu, Sebastian Koch, Jürgen Hentsch, Veronica Ferres

Biographical trilogy of the Mann family.

The drama spans the 20th century's most tumultuous decades, from 1918 to the 60s, and has been called, "a high point of German cinematic art" and "a great historical panorama of the 20th century".

Thomas Mann is regarded as the outstanding German novelist of his age. Famous for writing Magic Mountain and Death in Venice, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. But Thomas was not the only artist in the family. His brother Heinrich was also a writer and his children Klaus and Erika displayed their own unique talents.

The Manns were the most tormented, gifted and passionate actors in the dramas and tragedies of their time. They enjoyed the bohemian excesses of the Weimar Republic and the inevitable confrontation with Nazism. Virulently anti-Nazi, they lived in exile in Europe and the United States during World War II but during the post-war renaissance found their liberalism meet rising suspicions.

The film focuses on Thomas, his wife and children, his life in Munich, then as an exile and finally his return to Europe.  The life of his brother Heinrich is also included.  The biography is a skilful mixture of historical film material, newly staged scenes and present-day shots of the family's former locations wit a commentary by his last surviving daughter Elisabeth, now deceased.

The first part of the series begins in 1923 and concerns the life of the Mann family in their family residence in Münich during the decade in which Hitler's NSDAP came to power. The second part deals with the exile of the Manns in Switzerland and then America, following the Nazi takeover in 1933. The third and final part deals with the final years of the Manns' exile in post-war America and the family's eventual return to Europe (Switzerland) after the Second World War.

Hungary

Title: Vagabond  (2002)

Director: György Szomjas

Language:  Hungarian with English subtitles

Running time:  102 minutes

Cast: Judit Ábrahám, Gráci Benkie, Kata Horváth, Róbert Kerényi, Enikö Kocsis, Csaba Simon, Péter Simon, Réti Attila

Karesz's childhood was spent in an orphanage.  At the beginning of the film he is a member of a gang of gang of street urchins who wash car windscreens at red traffic lights in the hope of a tip.  Besides this, they are involved in a host of the evils offered by the capital:  in-fighting, burglary, drunkenness and drugs.  In pursuit of the girl, Zsófi Karesz unintentionally finds himself in the dance house where young people practise folk music and dance and is smitten by its unique atmosphere.  He becomes friendly with Gráci, an immigrant, moonlighting worker who only ceases to feel out of place in the big city when he can play the music of his home village at the dance house.  The trio is made up by "Szerb", a Hungarian lad from Yugoslavia who has come to Budapest to escape the Southern Slavonic wars.  As Karesz tries to bring himself to Zsófi's attention, he learns the dances and even experiments with some drumming.  In this way, Karesz becomes acquainted with Zsófi, with the group, the dances, and the various percussion instruments which are used in Hungarian, Southern Slavonic and Gypsy music.  Meanwhile his old cronies turn up and hustle him into participating in a burglary.  Later they all get drunk and the inebriated Karesz is knocked down by a car.  He ends up in hospital where he is visited by Zsófi.  Once back to health, he is received back into the dance house circle as a member.  He even lives with them.  He is beginning to be a talented percussionist and it is looking as though he will succeed in breaking away from his old friends of the underworld when... The cream of the folk bands appear in the film also Márta Sebestyén and the well-known Muzsikás.

Festivals:

• 2004 - Leeuwarden Noordelijk  Film Festival
• 2004 - Mexico International Film Festival
• 2004 - Sofia International film festival - European Screen
• 2004 - Trieste Film Festival
• 2003 - Amiens International film Festival  (in competition)
• 2003 - Berlin International Film Festival  (in competition)
• 2003 - Bratislava International Film Festival  
• 2003 - Karlovy Vary International Film Festival  
• 2003 - Lagów International Film Festival  (in competition)
• 2003 - Lecce European Cinema Festival ( in competition)
• 2003 - Ljubljana International Film Festival
• 2003 - Maine International Film Festival
• 2003 - Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
• 2003 - Moscow - Golden Knight International Film Festival (in competition)

ITALY

Original Title: Perlasca: Un Eroe Italiano (2002)

English Title: Perlasca

Director:  Alberto Negrin

Language: Italian with Chinese and English subtitles

Running time: 195 minutes

Cast:  Luca Zingaretti, Jerome Anger, Amanda Sandrelli, Marco Bonini..

Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian cattle trader living in Budapest in 1944 who became aghast at the Nazi roundups of the city's Jews.  Forgoing the opportunity to escape to Switzerland, he instead stayed behind, eventually managing to pose as the Spaniard consul (he had served with Franco's Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War) and engages in a series of deceptions, impersonations and briberies that are credited with sheltering about 5,000 would-be victims.

THE NETHERLANDS

Original title: De tweeling (2002)

English title: Twin Sisters

Director:  Ben Sombogaart

Language: Dutch with English subtitles

Running time: 129 Minutes

Cast:  Thekla Reuten; Nadja Uhl, Ellen Vogel, Gudrun Okras, Jeroen Spitzenberger, Roman Knizka, Barbara Auer and Ingo Naujoks.

Twin Sisters is an epic love story based on the Dutch bestseller by Tessa de Loo that has been read by more than 3.5 million readers in Holland and Germany.

Anna and Lotte are sisters, cruelly separated in early childhood.  Anna grows up in a simple farming household in Germany, Lotte lives a seemingly privileged life in the Netherlands.  The story centres on their relationship when they are in their twenties against the backdrop of turbulent times of the late 1930's and '40s.  Their lives will intersect and then separate again until finally in their twilight years, the two sisters will meet one last time.

Awards:

• 2004 ACADEMY AWARDS Nominated Best Foreign Language Film
• 2003 CAMBERIAMGE WINNER Silver Frog
• GOLD CALF AWARDS

POLAND

Title: Chopin-Desire for Love (2002)

Director:  Jerzy Antczak

Language: Polish with English subtitles

Running time:  134 minutes

Cast:   Pjort Adamczyk, Danuta Stenka

The daughter of the great French writer George Sand falls madly in love with her mother's lover, the genius composer Frederic Chopin Nothing will stop her from taking him away from her mother.  Also George's son, Maurice, an untalented painter, envious of his mother's love and Chopin's genius, will do anything to destroy their happiness.  

This family drama, woven through the music of Frederic Chopin, shows what a destructive force desire for love and the envy towards somebody else's fame can be.

Paris.  It is the year 1837.  After many years of love affairs evoking mixed emotions with Parisians, George Sand falls madly in love with Chopin, who is the Paris parlours' favourite aiming at the peaks of fame.  George decides to share her life with him trying to restore her torn family ties.  

Unhappily, almost from the very beginning, their great love is marked by bad omen which will last for eight long years: from their stay in Majorca to the years Chopin spent in Nohant on George Sand's family estate.  Things got even more painful and frustrating, when George Sand's children, not taken well care of in the past, grew up and started to claim the love, they had never received from their mother before.  Maurice, with no gift for painting, suffering from epilepsy attacks, unloved by his father, pushed away as a child by George, cannot accept that the Paris worshipped genius took his mother and her love away from him.  He starts a battle between life and death with Chopin.  Desperately fighting for his mother's love, he tries to kill himself.  It is a turning point in the mother-son relations.  From that moment on, having to choose between Chopin and Maurice, she chooses her son.  Solange moves forward to take the place of her mother as Chopin's lover.  She's young and possessive.  Like Maurice, pushed away as a child by her mother, she claims her place at the side of Chopin.  The situation becomes unbearable, resulting in the departure of Chopin from Nohant.  Two years later Chopin dies.  

This is a timeless story about the inability to understand each other, about the desperate desire for love.  Love which is so hard to find in life and so easy to loose.  All heroes turn out loosing.  What prevails in the end is the immortal music of Frederic Chopin.  

PORTUGAL

Original title:  A Batalha dos Três Reis  (2004)

English title: The Battle of the Three Kings

Director: Miguel Goncalves Mendes

Language:  Portuguese with English subtitles

Running time:  75 minutes

Cast:   David - Paulo Pinto, Laura - Rita Loureiro, Vasco - João Cabral, Mustafá - Jamal

On August the 4th, 1578, D Sebastião, King of Portugal, embanks on a suicidal journey to conquer Africal by land.  In this Battle known as "The Battle of the Three Kings", he looses his life, thus jeopardizing the future of Portugal.  Legend has it that no one saw the king die and that he will return in a misty dawn to save his country from poverty and disgrace.  "The Battle of the Three Kings", is the story of David, Laura and Vasco and their journey in a land of heat and insanity where they live an insane game of jealousy which leads them to a fatal achievement.

SPAIN

Original title: Juana la Loca (2001)

English title: Joan the Mad

Director:  Vicente Aranda

Language: Spanish with English subtitles

Running time: 117 Minutes

Cast:  Pilar López de Ayala (Joan), Daniele Liotti (Philip), Manuela Arcuri (Aixa), Eloy Azorín (Álvaro de Estuñiga), Rosana Pastor (Elvira) and Giuliano Gemma (De Vere)

Laredo, 22 August 1496.  A fleet bound for Flanders.  It is to carry the infanta Juana, daughter of the Catholic Kings, to the court of Brussels, where she shall marry the man later to be known as Felipe el Hermoso.

The union of Juana and Felipe is born of the dynastic alliance agreed between the Catholic Kings, Isabel and Fernando in Spain and the emperor Maximilian in Germany.

The meeting is cataclysmic.  No sooner do they see one another than they feel an uncontrollable attraction and desire.  They forget their political obligations and abandon themselves to their feelings.  However, destiny has other plans for them.

With the deaths of her elder brother and of her mother, Isabel la Católica, Juana becomes queen of Castile and heir to the throne of Aragón.

These events bring about two battles: one political, between the Flemish and Castilian nobles; the other, more painful, shall be fought by Juana in her wedding.

Awards:

3 Goya Awards

SWEDEN

Original title: Bröderna Mozart  (1985)

English title: The Mozart Brothers

Director :  Suzanne Osten

Language: Swedish with English subtitles

Running time: 110 mins

Cast:  Etienne Glaser, Philip Sandmen, Henry Bronett, Loa Falkman, Lena T Hansson,       Agneta Ekmanner, a.o.

This is a "different" film, a comedy about people who work in the theatre, live for theatre, think of nothing but theatre.  The company is assembled on the stage to go through a new production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" by an up-and-coming director.  This director is full of subversive ideas, violently opposed to tradition.  But the cast does non share his views.  The director explains he is out to breathe life into the opera. Somehow, as always in the theatre, the day dawns when understanding is reached and the opera grows into a wonderful production.  Mozart triumphs over the audience.  A different Mozart perhaps, but one with power and purpose.

THE UNITED KINGDOM

Title: Mrs Henderson Presents (2004)

Director: Stephen Frears

Language: English

Running time: 103 minutes

Cast: Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Kelly Reilly, Will Young

Set in pre-World War II widow Laura Henderson, a woman of wealth and connections, takes up a surprising hobby – buying up the Windmill Theatre in Soho, London. With no experience in running a theatre, Mrs Henderson hires Vivian Van Damm, a showbiz pro, as the theatre manager. Despite Van Damm's effort in banning the eccentric Mrs Henderson from interfering with the Theatre's operations, the provocative widow finds her way into rehearsals by dressing up as a Chinese matron and a polar bear.

The extraordinary partnership between Mrs Henderson and Van Damm sparks up new ideas that cement the Windmill's reputation and place in history.  Presenting a risqué musical extravaganza featuring naked girls on stage – a licence is granted by the censor as the girls remain immobile still-life imitations of art.  

When the bombing of London begins, the Windmill's survival is tested as Mrs Henderson's fighting spirit is revealed along with the secret that drew her to buy the theatre in the first place.

Awards & Nominations:

• Academy Awards, 2006
• BAFTA Awards, 2006
• British Independent Film awards, 2005
• Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
• David di Donatello Awards, 2006
• Empire Awards, 2006
• Golden Globes, 2006
• London Critics Circle Film Awards, 2006
• National Board of Review, 2005
• Satellite Awards, 2005
• Screen Actors Guild Awards, 2006