Period Piece

Normal

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.

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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.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2021
Official Selection | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2021

Benedetta

Marco Bellocchio, the enfant terrible of italian cinema, has graced us with one of his most mature films: a wonderfully balanced, deeply touching story about childhood, innocence and the loss of both.

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Turin, 1969. A boy's idyllic childhood is shattered by the sudden loss of his mother. Today he is an accomplished journalist, but after working as a war correspondent in Sarajevo, he starts to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents' apartment, the traumas of his past resurface, and a compassionate doctor helps him cope with his childhood wounds.

Sweet Dreams

Leconte's assured, yet delicate, directorial touch creates a world of melancholy and mourning, employing intricate costumes, imposing spaces and moody music. He crafts a film that moves at its own unique pace, while Alan Rickman is brilliant in one of his last roles.

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Germany, 1912. A young man gets a job at a steel plant, and the owner, impressed by his work, makes him his secretary. When his employer’s health worsens forcing him to stay indoors, his secretary moves in with him and his younger wife. He falls in love with her and when his boss announces that he is sending him to Mexico for two years, she makes a promise: when he comes back, she will be his. Eight years later, after millions of deaths and Europe destroyed by war, he returns home.

A Promise

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.

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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..."

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Alfred Bauer Award | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012
FIPRESCI Prize | Berlin International Film Festival | 2012
Audience Award | Las Palmas Film Festival | 2012

Tabu

Artists against Nazism, or in other words, Truffault’s idealistic approach to occupied France during World War II. A juicy role for Deneuve and a cheerful tone to accompany her dangerous romance, reminiscent of "Casablanca".

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Paris, 1942. A young man is chosen as the lead in a play at the Montmartre Theater. In fact, he is not just an actor, but also a member of the resistance. His gorgeous, unfriendly co-star, who is also the theater owner, hides her Jewish husband in the basement below the stage. The premiere of the show is extremely successful, but the triumph is tarnished by the criticism of an anti-Semitic theatrical reviewer. Things are becoming dangerous for everyone in the theater.

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Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 1981
Best Film | César Awards | 1981 
Best Cinematography | César Awards | 1981

The Last Metro

Based on Jack Kerouac's landmark novel, Walter Sales' film profiles the Beat Generation through its poetry, sex and drugs and this enchanting uncertainty about the future, set against the backdrop of endless American highways.

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In the late 1940s, young writer Sal meets Dean Moriarty, an ex-con from Denver, and his underage wife. The three of them, along with their quirky friends, will embark on a hellish journey of self-discovery from one end of America to the other with the help of drugs, disenchanted carnal pleasures and electrifying jazz tunes.

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Official Selection - International Competition | Cannes Film Festival | 2012

On the Road

Vietnamese Anh Hung Tran directs a brilliant French-speaking cast of actors, in a film that resembles an impressionist painting. Charming colors and a peaceful rhythm compose a sensual cinematic poem.

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In the late 19th century, a 20-year-old girl marries her loved one. Many decades later, their great-granddaughter runs on a bridge to end up in the arms of the man she loves. Somewhere between those moments, men and women fall in love and sow the seeds of a family tree. These are their stories.

Eternity

The "difficult second film" for Laszlo Nemes after the triumph of his debut, "Son of Saul", is equally masterful. It’s a superbly orchestrated, suffocating descent into existential hell through the entropic streets of Budapest in 1910, just before World War I.

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Budapest, 1913. A young girl arrives in town, hoping to work as a milliner in the legendary hat shop that once belonged to her parents, but the new owner won’t hire her. Meanwhile, preparations are being made in the store to welcome some prominent visitors. A man approaches the girl, looking for someone who has her last name, but she doesn't know him. Refusing to leave town, she starts looking for the stranger who might be the only link to her lost past.

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Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2018
FIPRESCI Prize | Venice Film Festival | 2018

Sunset

An exemplary biopic about the younger years of Marx, Engels and Jenny Marx. Ethics, philosophy and a journey through 19th century Europe, in a marvellous film by Raoul Peck (Oscar nominee for the documentary "I'm Not Your Negro").

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The 26-year-old Karl Marx, exiled from Germany, leaves with his wife, Jenny. In Paris in 1844, they meet Friedrich Engels, the son of a factory manager who has studied the origins of the proletariat in England. Together against censorship, police raids and political upheavals, they contribute to the birth of the labour movement, a movement that evolved into the most complete and seismic academic and political transformation of the western world after the Renaissance.

The Young Karl Marx

The tragic portrait of a charismatic, complex and unconventional woman who lived during conservative times. Everything is contained: Dailida’s grandeur, her glittering talent and natural glamour, her capacity to love passionately and completely and her constant, devastating brushes with death.

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The film chronicles the turbulent life of Dalida, the talented diva of European music, whose star continues to shine despite her tragic death in 1987. She was born in '33 in Cairo and performed her first concert at the Olympia Theatre in Paris in '56, while in the 70s she became the reigning queen of the disco scene. She was married to Lucien Morisse, but like many men in her life, he committed suicide. Dalida took several trips to India looking for inner peace, but was never able to find it.

Dalida

Fatih Akin is in the mood for epic adventure and history, courageously focusing on the Armenian genocide. This imposing and affecting quest of one man gives us a chance to contemplate: how far would we go to be reunited with our loved ones?

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Mardin, 1915. A young blacksmith is violently separated from his family. Years later, having survived the genocide, he discovers that his daughters are still alive, and his life's mission becomes to find them again. He travels from the deserts of Mesopotamia to Havana and the pastures of North Dakota. During his journey, he will experience people’s capacity for kindness, but also disdain and brutality.

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Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2014
Vittorio Veneto Film Festival Award | Special Mention | Venice Film Festival | 2014
Audience Award | Sofia International Film Festival | 2015

The Cut

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.

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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.

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Best Sound Award | César Awards | 2017

The Odyssey

A perfect example of entertaining and, at the same time, political cinema, that highlights issues of solidarity and activism, in the footsteps of "The Full Monty", a proud example of the proverbial ability of the British to manage bittersweet stories.

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A group of London activists made up of gay men and women arrives in a small Welsh town where they will be joined by a handful of striking miners and their families, who stubbornly resist the neoliberal Thatcher policy of that time.

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Queer Palm | Cannes Film Festival | 2014
Nominated for Golden Globe | Golden Globes | 2015
Outstanding British Film | BAFTA Awards | 2015

Pride

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.

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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.

Miss Julie

The film that stood out like no other after its participation in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2022 is an epic of unparalleled beauty and charming ferocity about the eternal battle between the spiritual and the material, nature and man, religion and desire.

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At the end of the 19th century, a young Danish priest is ordered by his superiors to go to a remote area of Iceland to build a church. He has a passion for photography and is interested in photographing the locals, something no one has attempted before.

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Official Selection - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2022
Best Film Special Mention | London Film Festival | 2022
Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Prize | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2022

Godland

A rainy poem of martial arts and color shades in the hands of the unsurpassed Wong Kar-wai. Starring his regular partner, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, in delightful kung fu battles with Zhang Ziyi.

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Ip Man, the great Kung Fu Master, was born in 1893 in Foshan, China. His early education began at age 7 and, while still young, he fought the best warriors, defeating them all. His life was tragically transformed when, during the Japanese invasion and subsequent civil war, he was forced to go to exile, leaving his beloved family behind. In Hong Kong, Ip Man began a successful career as a martial arts teacher, with Bruce Lee as his most famous student.

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Nominated for Best Achievement in Cinematography | Oscars | 2014
Nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design | Oscars | 2014

The Grandmaster

Andrew Haigh (All Of Us Strangers) takes a break from heart-wrenching dramas about the complexities of human relationships and moves to the small screen with an epic series about redemption and survival in the Arctic landscape, starring the exceptional duo of Jack O'Connell and Colin Farrell.

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A disgraced former military doctor embarks on a poignant journey by boarding a whaling ship as its designated surgeon, heading toward the unforgiving Arctic. As he sets sail, the story unfolds, revealing a profound quest for redemption that gradually transforms into a gripping struggle for survival.

The North Water

Luscious images of gastronomic porn, garnished with class-conscious commentary, in a film that pays tribute to the French tradition of crowd-pleasers and leaves every kind of cinephile satisfied - devoted foodies and the less gastronomically inclined alike.

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On the eve of the French Revolution, gastronomy in France is the exclusive domain of the aristocracy. When the highly skilled chef Manceran is dismissed for serving a dish his master did not approve, he resolves to strike out on his own, opening the very first restaurant to offer gourmet cuisine to people of the lower classes.

Delicious

What if the heroine of a Jane Austen story… were Jane herself? Sometimes fiction pales next to real life in this romantic film inspired by a true episode from the legendary author’s past. With Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy in charming form, it is a must-see for every Austen fan.

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Inspired by an episode in the life of author Jane Austen, the film introduces us to the spirited 20 year old Jane before fame found her, determined to marry for love despite her parents’ plans. When Jane (Anne Hathaway) meets the awkward, arrogant Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), she cannot stand him at first — but soon feels drawn to this poor yet sharp-witted young man. She finds herself at odds with society and its expectations, much like so many of the characters who would later inhabit her work.

Becoming Jane

Is it possible for a person to physically and spiritually change in the course of his life, having acceptance as a self-goal? With realism and boldness, a young director from Denmark describes a painstakingly hidden long-standing case of racism which victimized native Northern European Sami people.

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A tribute to those who remained in – but also those who left - a society on the edge of the world and at the same time an alternative, personal narrative about the colonial past of a "civilized" country, through the eyes and experiences of a teenager.

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Human Values Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2016
Best Director of a Debut Film | Venice Film Festival | 2016
Europa Cinemas Award | Venice Film Festival | 2016

Sami Blood

The history of Greece as experienced through the lives of a single family, set against a backdrop of wars, losses, and historical upheavals. The first part of Angelopoulos’ unfinished trilogy is an ambitious historical narrative of the Greek twentieth century.

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The story follows a family of refugees from the early twentieth century through to the Civil War. Through movements, separations, and reunions, personal lives intersect with Greece’s major historical transformations. Space and time are in constant flux, while the characters remain trapped in an unending search for a homeland.

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FIPRESCI Prize | European Film Awards | 2004
Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2004

The Weeping Meadow

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.

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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.

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Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2018
Best Film | Dublin International Film Festival | 2019

Transit

Dominik Graf, one of the greatest living German directors, brings a masterpiece of interwar literature to the big screen with marvelous results. Official selection in the Competition Section of the Berlin Festival 2021.

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Berlin, 1930s. A young advertiser will meet a beautiful and ambitious actress. Their relationship will become the only ray of light in a world collapsing around them, gradually surrendering to the Nazi darkness.

Fabian: Going to the Dogs

In this fascinating biopic, passionately dedicated to the magic of dancing, Loie Fuller attains the posthumous fame she deserves. Remarkable performances from singer Soko in the role of Loie Fuller and Lily-Rose Depp in the role of Isadora Duncan.

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Nothing from Loie Fuller's past foretold that she would someday become a dancer at the Paris Opera, let alone a symbol of the Belle Époque. Even when facing the fear of permanent injury or blindness, the passionate Loie would keep on honing her art. Her meeting with Isadora Duncan, a young, talented and ambitious dancer, marked the beginning of her fall.

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Best Costume Design | César Awards | 2017

The Dancer

Vincent Cassel portrays the emblematic artist of the title with great passion and drive, in a biography that explores the mechanisms of artistic creation and the relationship between civilization and nature, paganism and religion.

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Prior to becoming famous, French painter Paul Gauguin travels to Tahiti. His stay at the exotic island shapes his personality and drastically influences his artistic identity, gifting him everlasting fame.