A harsh portrait of Turkey, its people and its authorities, shown through the stories of five prisoners given a week’s home leave, and the problems they encounter in adjusting to the world outside.
Tag: SWITZERLAND
A sculptor is fighting his final battle against death on his houseboat on the frozen Schelde river. Two women are at his side: his first wife, who he is divorced from, and his second wife. The latter is most concerned about his death as she realizes that in the end the only result will be irrevocable loneliness. She wants to postpone the fatal moment and therefore tries to find comfort in her reminiscences from the times when she was happy with him. A story about fidelity till after death.
An anthology film drama featuring a poetic mirror structure based on existential identity. In “The Immortals,” adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. “Suzy,” from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the ’30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. “Mother of the River” is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life.
Ema is a sweet and innocent girl who is so beautiful she turns the head of every man she passes. Her life takes a despairing turn for the worse when her father forces her into a passionless marriage to his friend, a wealthy doctor. To make matters worse, she is relocated to the scenic but unfamiliar and isolated vineyards of Abraham’s Valley, Portugal where the breathtaking river Douro flows. Trapped in a marriage to a man she does not love, she scorns her husband and threatens to kill herself rather than submit to his desires.
A dream-like version of the Sabbath in the Middle Ages: one night at full moon, the women leave home to meet with the devil in the woods. Several orgiastic ceremonies later, they all return home at cockcrow. All except for one, the youngest, who is under an evil spell.
A love story between a “demi-mondaine” kept by various lovers, suffering from tuberculosis, and a young provincial bourgeois. Adaptation from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, “The Lady of the Camellias”.
Freelance journalist Pierre and his friend Paul, a poet, join forces to pen a screenplay about Rosemonde, who may or not may not have shot her uncle many years earlier. Pierre pursues the facts while Paul begins to create a fictional Rosemonde — that is, until he meets her and oddly finds his creativity fading away. Meanwhile, both men become attracted to the young woman, but find it impossible to discover her true character.
SHADOW OF ANGELS is the film adaptation of R.W. Fassbinder’s last and most controversial play, “Garbage, the City, and Death,” which was banned in Germany. The story concerns Lily, a prostitute too beautiful to have clients and the real estate speculator she befriends. Lily is paid to listen to her customers’ despairing monologues about politics, power, corruption, and guilt. SHADOW OF ANGELS is quintessential Fassbinder, a fable about victims and victimizers and not so nascent neo-Nazi sympathies in post-war Germany.