Films that take place in different times, from the Middle Ages to… 2046, depicting a different era than the present. Movies about great love, heroic acts, tragedies, social unrest, family dramas. Movies that remind us that no matter how many years pass, human passions remain the same.

Time Machine

Normal

Oscar-nominated, tender adaptation of an acclaimed short story about a young girl who discovers a secret that will change her life. Impressive directorial debut from Ireland, which eschews the conventions of a coming-of-age film, and synchronizes the heart of the story with the pulse of the viewer.

—
Due to her mother’s pregnancy, Cáit, the young daughter of a large, poor family - a truly quiet girl, will spend the summer with distant relatives. Thanks to their care, she will slowly find her voice in the idyllic setting of the Irish countryside. But while there are supposed to be no secrets among the members of her new family, she will discover one.

—
Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2023
Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | BAFTA | 2023
Official Selection | Berlin Film Festival | 2022

The Quiet Girl

Postmodern parable with elements of a mystical thriller and an action film, centered on a Soviet executioner who discovers that he has a soul. But is there a heaven for executioners? Narrative that refers to the great classics of Russian literature, and a participation in the Venice Film Festival.

—
Captain Fyodor Volkonogov, a respected and docile law enforcement officer of the Soviet Union, witnesses some suspicious interrogations that his colleagues go through. Sensing that his turn is approaching, he escapes and is soon on the run, pursued by his former colleagues. Vulnerable and desperate, he realizes what he has done, but his time is running out and the manhunter's noose closes tightly.

—
Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2021

Captain Volkonogov Escaped

normal

The greatest living Chinese director, Zhang Yimou’s latest film, is a tender and bittersweet love letter to the art of cinema and the stuff which every "little" person's dreams are made of.

—
The paths of a man who has escaped from a rural prison and a young wandering thief intersect with the cause and bone of contention of a stolen bobbin during the Cultural Revolution in China.

—
Official Selection | Berlin Film Festival | 2022
Official Selection | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2022
Best Director Award | Asian Film Awards | 2021

One Second

Provocation and scandal has long been Paul Verhoeven’s métier (Basic Instinct, Her), so it’s no wonder that, at 82, he dares to tell the story of a lesbian love affair in a convent, while also making an apt commentary on the different iterations of Faith and the Divine in our lives.

—
In the late 17th century, with plague ravaging the land, Benedetta Carlini joins the convent in Pescia, Tuscany, as a novice. Capable from an early age of performing miracles, her impact on life in the community is immediate. When Benedetta takes a young woman into her convent in order to rescue her from her abusive family, the two women will engage in a passionate love affair with unpredictable consequences. Based on a true story, as it was written down on the book by Judith C. Brown.

—
Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2021
Official Selection | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2021

Benedetta

Women's solidarity and friendship take center stage in an extremely timely, compelling portrait of politics, family and gender dynamics, things that are always intertwined, after all. Awarded in Berlin.

—
A kind and charming woman tries to break free from the political chaos of 1960 Indonesia. Decades later she escapes poverty when she remarries a wealthy Sundanese man. While the memories and trauma of the war still haunt her, she begins to question the patriarchal structure of the society of her time thanks to the company of Ino, her husband's lover.

—
Best Supporting Performance | Berlin Film Festival | 2022
Jury Prize | Brussels Film Festival | 2022

Before, Now and Then

Overturning all the clichés of period films, Marie Kreutzer makes a modern and unconventional film, where Vicky Krieps gives a masterful performance as Empress Sissi, disappearing inside the tight corset of self-restraint and social criticism of the intertemporal patriarchy.

—
On Christmas 1877, Sissi celebrates her 40th birthday. As the First Lady of Austria and wife of the emperor, she is not allowed to express herself and must remain the beautiful young empress forever. To meet these expectations, she follows a strict program of fasting, exercise, combing her hair and measuring her waistline daily. Stifled by these conventions, hungry for knowledge and life, Sissi rebels more and more against this image.

—
Best Performance - Un Certain Regard (Vicky Krieps) | Cannes Film Festival | 2022
Best Actress (Vicki Krieps) | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2022
Best Film | London Film Festival | 2022

Corsage

Gripping courtroom thriller set against the background of the true story that led to one of the biggest political scandals of the communist period. Poland's contender for the Oscars stood out at the Venice Film Festival, walking the distance between police violence and the objective truth.

—
In 1983, Communist Poland is in turmoil following the death of 18-year-old Grzegorz Przemyk, after he was beaten by the police. The only eyewitness to the event becomes the number one enemy of the state.

—
Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2021
Official Submission of Poland | Oscars | 2021

Leave No Traces

Thanks to its audacious directing, remarkable use of sound, and the acting talent of Timothée Robart, this first feature film accurately portrays the complexity of its era, from political disillusionment to the liberating energy of rock’n’roll.

—
A small provincial town at the beginning of the 80s. Phillipe lives in the shadow of his brother, Jerome, the bad boy of the group. Between pirate radio, their father’s garage and the threat of military service, they are unaware that they are living the last moments of a world on the verge of disappearing.

—
SACD Prize | Director's Fortnight | 2021

Magnetic Beats

The sapphic love that led to Orlando, one of the most subversive masterpieces of global literature, is ingeniously portrayed by Gemma Arterton and the up-and-coming Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia Woolf.

—
Two incompatible women, one unconventional relationship. In 1920 London, poet and socialite Vita Sackville-West and legendary writer Virginia Woolf will begin a turbulent, passionate relationship that will transcend all social taboos, forever change their lives and work, and will go down in history.

Vita & Virginia

From “The People Vs. Fritz Bauer” and the guilt over the crimes of the Third Reich, director Lars Kraume shifts his focus to East Germany and a true story of rights infringement from an utterly different ideological starting point, thus creating a balanced dyad of historical memory.

—
A group of twelfth-grade pupils decide to show their solidarity with the victims of the 1956 Hungarian uprising by staging two minutes of silence during lessons. Based on real events and the memoirs of Dietrich Garstka.

—
Audience Award | Berkshire International Film Festival | 2019

The Silent Revolution

Worthy of Cousteau’s fascinating personality, this biopic is brimming with magnificent underwater scenes and dramatic tensions. The depths of the ocean rival the depths of human souls. Pierre Niney, Audrey Tautou and Lambert Wilson in the role of the legendary explorer, equally shine in diving them.

—
1946. Cousteau dives with his son, Philippe, into the beautiful waters of the Mediterranean. Cousteau buys a boat, Calypso, and starts traveling while his sons are in boarding school. 10 years later, Philippe finds his father changed: he is a famous director and chief of a huge operation, whose life consists of conferences, trade agreements, projects. He can't see how ever-increasing pollution by humans is threatening the world he introduced them to. But Philippe can.

—
Best Sound Award | César Awards | 2017

The Odyssey

That’s how Apocalypse Now would look like if instead of the Vietnam jungle, Coppola had set it in hushed lounges, offices with giant doors and eclectic swimming pools. Made with enviable confidence, Azor is a fascinating directorial debut about the dark journey to corruption.

—
In 1980 Argentina, in the midst of dictatorship, a Swiss private banker disappears under unspecified circumstances. When his partner takes over the investigation of the case himself, he immerses in a mystery set behind bourgeois offices' heavy doors and dense gardens of the regime's favoured parvenus.

—
Official Selection - Encounters | Berlin Film Festival | 2021
Official Selection | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2021
First Feature International Competition | London Film Festival | 2021
Official Selection | Athens Film Festival | 2021

Azor

Loosely inspired by Mike Leigh’s childhood environment, this is one of the greatest titles in the director’s filmography, awarded with the Golden Lion in Venice Film Festival, nominated for 3 Oscars, and with an unforgettable Imelda Staunton in the leading role.

—
In 1950s England, 45 year old Vera Drake, a simple and goodhearted woman that works as a cleaner, conceals from her family that she performs illegal abortions, something she considers the humane thing to do for the unfortunate girls, and for which she’s not getting paid. But when one of her patients has post-surgery complications, Vera’s work will be revealed and she will face the law, society and her family.

—
Golden Lion | Venice FIlm Festival | 2004
Best Actress (Imelda Staunton) | Venice FIlm Festival | 2004
Best Actress (Imelda Staunton) | BAFTA Awards | 2005
Best Director | BAFTA Awards | 2005
Nomination for Best Leading Actress Best Director and Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2005

Vera Drake

Based on a true story, this powerful drama of abortions and prostitution during World War II, is one of Isabelle Huppert’s finest collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol, and gave the actress a completely fair award in the 1988 International Venice Film Festival.

—
In German-occupied France during World War II, struggling to make ends meet when her husband returns home after being wounded in the war, a poor woman tries to earn money and support her family by performing illegal abortions.

—
Golden Ciak Award for Best Film | Venice Film Festival | 1988
Best Actress (Isabelle Huppert) | Venice Film Festival | 1988

A Story of Women

German Christian Petzold ("Barbara", "Phoenix") turns one of the most important German anti-Nazism books into a (dis)achronistic dystopian allegory for resistance to (any) fascism.

—
While Europe is affected by war, a wanted man is in possession of the last manuscripts of a dead writer. One of them is a letter from his wife asking him to meet her again in Marseille and the other from the Consulate of Mexico offering him a visa and travel documents to leave.

—
Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2018
Best Film | Dublin International Film Festival | 2019

Transit

The greatest love stories have yet to be told. An elderly woman embarks on a long journey and thus unleashes a grand, tender, peculiar, unique second part in a film for which just one time is not enough.

—
A woman spends her retirement years taking care of the people around her. Most of all, she's troubled by her lonely neighbor, an eccentric 80-year-old who believes her maid is using voodoo on her. The old woman wants to meet a man from her past, so the retiree and the maid join forces to help her find him. The man has a story to tell. A story that unfolded 50 years ago, before the Portuguese colonial war, and begins as follows: "He had a farm in Africa, at the base of mount Tabu..."

—
Alfred Bauer Award | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012
FIPRESCI Prize | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012
Audience Award | Las Palmas Film Festival | 2012

Tabu

La Belle Époque meets “Westworld” and the spirit of Charlie Kaufman. When and where would you travel if you could? Would you spend a night in the palace as Marie Antoinette? Would you go for a drink with Ernest Hemingway? Daniel Auteuil travels to the past to relive the moment that changed his life.

—
The quiet life of 60-year-old Victor is turned upside down the day young Antoine offers him a unique, innovative form of entertainment. Thanks to a combination of theatrical tricks and historical reenactment, Antoine’s company offers its clients the opportunity to travel back to any time period they choose. Victor chooses to go back to Lyon in 1974 and relive the most unforgettable week of his life: when he met his one true love 40 years in the past… Can he still feel the same way?

—
Best Production Design | César Awards | 2020
Best Supporting Actress (Fanny Ardant) | César Awards | 2020
Best Original Screenplay | César Awards | 2020
Directors to Watch | Palm Springs International Film Festival | 2020

La Belle Époque

The Russian director Kantemir Balagov fully justifies the expectations he created with "Closeness" and gets inspired by Nobel prize author Svetlana Alexievich for a masterful and heartbreaking cinematic experience that touches levels of ancient tragedy.

—
1945, Leningrad; two young women, who were found on the battlefield together, try to get back on their feet and rebuild their lives amongst the ruins that the war has left behind. They will meet again at the hospital where one of them works as a nurse, after a tragedy and the unspoken trauma that they both carry, they will try to survive and redefine a relationship powered by secrets, mistakes and guilt.

—
FIPRESCI Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2019
Best Director Award - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2019

Beanpole

Journey through the years of divided Germany with the award-winning, stylish and suspenseful drama from the great Christian Petzold ("Transit") starring the one and only Nina Hoss.

—
1980. A pediatric surgeon who applied for a visa to leave East Germany is transferred to a small hospital in the country and monitored by the Stasi. Her lover in the West is planning her escape, so she patiently waits. At work, she is tender and caring towards her patients, but indifferent towards her colleagues. Her supervisor is a confusing, alluring presence. Is he watching her? Is he flirting with her? As the escape day approaches, she becomes more and more unsure of what she wants.

—
Best Director | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012
Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012

Barbara

Not just two legendary athletes, but two conflicting life views. On the one hand, the calm winner of 5 titles Swedish Bjorn Borg. On the other hand, the up-and-coming irritable American John McEnroe. The two of them will face each other on the ultimate terrain: the great Wimbledon final.

—
Wimbledon final, 1980. The whole planet is breathlessly watching the most important tennis match in history, between two men who are currently considered the legends of the sport. The legendary battle, as well as its unknown background, are revealed in an exciting story about the expense of achieving your dreams: reaching the top of the world.

Borg Mcenroe

A macabre real-life event is the springboard for creative freedom and a crazy, cinephile comedy in which desperation meets Charlie Chaplin, whose spirit is behind every hilarious -and sad- occasion.

—
Christmas Eve of 1977 in Vevey, a small Swiss town. Outside the town prison, a man greets a friend with whom he has arranged a mutual exchange. The man’s wife is in the hospital, so his friend will babysit his young daughter in exchange for room and board. This Christmas Eve, though, the lack of money is palpable. So when the TV announces the Charlie Chaplin’s death, they come up with a crazy idea: steal the actor's coffin and ask his family for ransom.

—
Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2014

The Price of Fame

In his most soulful and ambitious moment, Wong Kar Wai dives into the science fiction of memories of an elusive past, climaxing his obsessions with the (legendary) aesthetic perfection of his images.

—
An author is writing a book about 2046, a place where people travel on board a mysterious train, in search of their lost memories. As he plunges into his writing, the boundaries between the past and the future, his own life and fiction, dreams and memory, become blurred and indistinct.

—
Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2004 
Best Actor (Tony Leung) | Hong Kong Film Awards | 2005
Best Actress (Ziyi Zhang) | Hong Kong Film Awards | 2005
Best Cinematography | Hong Kong Film Awards | 2005
Best Art Direction | Hong Kong Film Awards | 2005
Best Original Film Score | Hong Kong Film Awards | 2005

2046

Andy Serkis’ first feature film is a touching and bigger than life romance, with the photogenic presence of Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy as the leading roles. Get your handkerchiefs ready.

—
When young Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield) is paralyzed by polio, his wife Diana (Claire Foy) will do everything possible to restore his zest for life, in the directorial debut of Andy Serkis.

Breathe

The great Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta plays himself in a unique biographical film by the director of “The Olive Tree”, about the talent and stubbornness of a young child that allow him to travel from Havana to the Royal Ballet in London. Written by Paul Laverty, Ken Loach's permanent screenwriter.

—
Inspired by the life of the great Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta and based on his autobiography, Icíar Bollaín's film (“The Olive Tree,” “Even the Rain”) is a chronicle of his sensational life. From the streets of Havana, to the Royal Ballet in London, the leading dancer of his generation, had to overcome huge difficulties and break terrible taboos, to become the legend he is today.

—
Best Screenplay | San Sebastian FIlm Festival | 2018

Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story

The chilling tension of Strindberg's emblematic play is perfectly conveyed to the silver screen. It feels like a silent, yet deafening, scream, which spins around in a choreography of passion, death and chaos.

—
On the night of the 1890 Summer Solstice, a day of celebration for Northern Ireland, the spoiled daughter of an aristocrat "allow" one of her father's servants to seduce her. In the uncontrollable revelry, when social restrictions largely disappear, Miss Julie and John dance and drink, charm and manipulate each other. Through her arrogance and his rudeness, the two of them form a connection. Uncertain as to what the day will bring, they resort to an act reminiscent of a Greek tragedy.