A family trip which transforms into a tragicomic psychological drama. Claiming that it was her son’s wish, Grandma Valerie is determined to transfer his urned remains from the small Czech town to their native Slovakia. Her daughter-in-law accompanies her, as do her two adult granddaughters, one nearing the end of her pregnancy with a five-year-old in tow, the other with her husband. Tense relations and conflict come to a head along the way, and the truth erupts from under layers of pretence and deferential consideration. The truths revealed are at times surprising, at others bitter or even comic, but always cleansing.
Tag: 2000s
In 1942, in Vilnius, the Nazi annihilate 55,000 Jews and squeeze the 15,000 survivors in a seven blocks ghetto. The twenty-two year old sadistic commander Kittel is assigned to administrate the ghetto in the capital of Lithuania, becoming the master of life or death. When he finds the gorgeous Hayyah sneaking with one kilo of beans stolen from the German army, he sentences her to death; but when he is informed that she was a former successful singer, he decides to activate the old theater and promote shows in the ghetto. The Jewish Chief of Police, Gens, uses the theater and a sewing factory to save as much lives as he can; in his ambiguous position, he kills Jews to save lives of others.
An aging salesman is fired from his job after a long career in it. Broken, without much to look forward to, he tries reconnecting with his wife and kids who he had always put down as he dedicated himself to work.
A group of young UN soldiers in Lebanon enters service with pro-Israeli views and a naive outlook on war. They go through a radical change of heart as they witness and film the Qana massacre. They secure video evidence indicating that Israel deliberately bombed a UN camp killing 106 refugees.
Daniel Moulin goes to New York on a business trip and decides to take advantage of his time in the Big Apple to try and locate the father he never knew. The only thing he has to go on however is an address in the Bronx that is 25 years old.
The story concerns a young man living at home, André, whose ideas are radically different from those of his farmer father. The father advocates order and restraint, which enhance his own power under the guise of family love. The son seeks freedom and pleasure, exemplified in his passion for his sister Ana. When André moves to a seedy boarding house, his older brother Pedro, is asked by their mother to bring him back. His return, however, will shatter the family’s insular life.
Kagatani Shizuo, an employee at home electronics manufacturer Victor Company of Japan (JVC) is transferred to the home video division of the company’s Yokohama factory, and told to cut the division’s staff by 20%. But Kagatani doesn’t want to fire anyone so he decides to increase sales instead by developing a home video player. Inspired by Kagatani’s impassioned phrase, “We have to defend our jobs ourselves,” the employees pour their efforts into product development, and perfect a trial model, VHS.
While unearthing an icon of the Holy Madonna in her small apartment, an elderly Greek woman sighs that she is in the inevitable winter of her life. She studies a textbook of the French language, which she used to have a thorough command of, but unfortunately let slide. She hardly reads anymore, either, which she thinks rather stupid of herself. Her window on the world is her television, which she briskly comments on. The bleach-blond anchor woman is very sharp, but her favourite is newsreader Niko. The Box is a reflection in miniature format about old age and one-way communication in our media-dominated society.