rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films

May 16, 2021 / Drama

Georgica (1998)

——UPGRADED——

Jakub Luukas, who had gone to Africa as a christian missionary shortly after World War II, returns to the small Estonian island where he was born more than 70 years ago. Since it is now being used as a testing-ground for bombs, it is completely deserted. With a horse and three beehives, Jakub lives here in complete isolation, dreaming of translating Vergil’s pastorale “Georgica” into Swahili. His life changes when a young, mute boy comes onto the island: even though they both live in completely different internal worlds.

WATCH HERE

April 6, 2020 / Adventure

The Fool Killer (1965) AKA Violent Journey

——UPGRADED——

While traveling through the South after the ravages of the Civil War, a parentless young boy named George Mellish is told the spooky tale of an axe-murderer called “The Fool Killer.” When George befriends the odd Milo Bogardus, he begins to fear that the legends might not be mere fiction.

WATCH HERE

January 28, 2019 / Biography

Hanna’s War (1988)

——UPGRADED——

Hanna’s War is the true story of Hanna Senesh, a Hungarian-Jewish WW2 resistance fighter, who would become Israel’s “Joan of Arc”. As a young person, she fled Nazi-occupied Hungary for Palestine, where she was recruited and trained by the British to serve as a commando. After completing her training in Britain, she parachutes into Yugoslavia with a commando team to establish escape routes across the Hungarian-Yugoslavian border for downed British pilots. Her attempts to save Hungarian Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary, however, leads to her capture, torture and demise at the hands of the Gestapo and the Nazi-controlled Hungarian police.

WATCH HERE

August 18, 2018 / Drama

Angèle (1934)

——UPGRADED——

Angèle, the daughter of Clarius, a farmer in the mountain of Provence, lives with her parents and their valet Saturnin. One day, near the farm, she meets Louis, a good-looking young man from Marseilles who is taking a holiday there. Unaware that he is nothing but a gigolo she is seduced by Louis and follows him to the city. But Louis, who has made her pregnant, forces her to be a whore before rejecting her. A year later, Saturnin comes to Marseilles in search of Angèle and finds her in a sorry state. He persuades her to return to the farm….

WATCH HERE

July 22, 2025 / Drama

Chère Louise (1972)

Louise lives alone and seems to like it that way. She has been through a divorce and the recent death of her mother. Recently, she has moved to Annecy, a moderate-sized city, to take work as a schoolteacher. She encounters a much younger man, Luigi, an Italian who is down on his luck. Though he moved to France to find work, he was robbed of his money and papers and is stranded. When he helps her bury her dogs, which her neighbour has poisoned for barking, their relationship grows to a new level.

WATCH HERE

July 22, 2025 / Drama

L’intrus (2004) AKA The Intruder

Louis Trebor, a man nearing 70, lives alone with dogs in the forest near the French-Swiss border. He has heart problems, seeks a transplant, and then goes in search of a son sired years before in Tahiti. Told elliptically, with few words, we see Louis as possibly heartless, ignoring a son who lives nearby who is himself an attentive father to two young children, one named for Louis. He leaves his bed one night – and his lover – to kill an intruder; he dreams, usually of violence. Will his body accept his heart? Will his son accept his offer?

WATCH HERE

July 21, 2025 / Drama

Andremo in città (1966)

In a small village in Yugoslavia during the German occupation, a girl, Lenka, lives with her blind brother, while her father and boyfriend fight. One day they return with the Nazis on their tail.

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July 21, 2025 / Arthouse

Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1976) AKA A Dream Longer Than the Night

In her second feature (and her first solo feature), the multidisciplinary artist Niki de Saint Phalle pursues her own take on the fairy tale, and the result is a visionary exploration of female desire that unfurls according to the logic of dreams and poetry. The film follows a princess (played by Saint Phalle’s daughter, Laura Duke Condominas) who, following a series of encounters with fantastical beings, is magically transformed into an adult, and finds herself navigating a frightening and surreal new world. A work suffused with ideas and strong ties to Saint Phalle’s work in other media (sculpture, painting, assemblage, etc.), Un rêve plus long que la nuit is both an exemplary artist’s film and an underseen gem of 1970s French avant-garde cinema.

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July 21, 2025 / Experimental

Fresh Kill (1994)

Young lesbian parents Shareen and Claire are raising their 5-year-old daughter Honey in a converted garage on Staten Island. Shareen salvages refuse with her pickup truck while Claire waits tables at the hip Naga Saki restaurant in Manhattan, caught up in a global exchange of industrial waste via contaminated sushi. As a ghost barge bearing nuclear refuse circles the planet in search of a willing port, household pets begin to glow ominously, then disappear; and people start speaking in tongues. The crisis escalates when a multinational corporation is implicated, the couple’s daughter Honey mysteriously vanishes, and a group of young New Yorkers strike back in an unlikely alliance with activists in the developing world.

WATCH HERE

July 19, 2025 / Drama

On the Nickel (1980) [Director’s Cut]

Sam, a recovering alcoholic, feels dissatisfied with his life of sobriety and goes back in search of the good times he enjoyed with his wino friends on “the Nickel” of Los Angeles’ skid row.

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July 19, 2025 / Experimental

In Order Not To Be Here (2002)

An uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. An isolation-based fear (protect us from people not like us). A fear of irregularity (eat at McDonalds, you know what to expect). A fear of thought (turn on the television). A fear of self (don’t stop moving). By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.

WATCH HERE

July 19, 2025 / Arthouse

The Illiac Passion (1967)

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the “forest.” There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York “underground scene” who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

WATCH HERE

rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts