Jean-Claude Lauzon’s highly praised film tells the strange story of Léolo, a young boy from Montréal. Told from Léolo’s point-of-view, the film depicts his family of lunatics and Léolo’s attempts to deal with them. Not one individual in the boy’s life is well adjusted. His brother, after being beaten up, spends the film bulking up on growth protein. The grandfather hires half-naked girls to bite off his toenails and, in a brutal rage, almost kills Léolo. As he witnesses his family decay around him, Léolo retreats into himself and the fantasy world he has constructed.
Year: 2024
A seriocomic look at the life of Julie Walker. Bored with her marriage, and encouraged by her friends, she contemplates an affair. Fantasy and reality mix often, leading to complications and headaches.
In 1461, French nobles fearing King Louis XI may seize their lands, join forces with the rebellious Duke of Burgundy to overthrow the king. One of the Duke’s captains suggests enlisting the aid of Francois Villon who is known to oppose the king and is leader of the Vagabonds, a group that robs the rich to aid the poor. In league with Burgundy, Villon and two of his cohorts enter Paris, but are captured by the king’s men. The king, recognizing Villon’s power over the people, proposes that Villon defend Paris against Burgundy and help uncover traitors in the court.
An American film-critic flies to Berlin to investigate about the life of German filmmaker F. W. Murnau. After meeting his former girlfriend, a painter, and finding a statue near Murnau’s tomb, begins a strange mystic journey through time and space: a romantic unification of ancient and modern world, suspicions and memories, art and life.
In its mesmerizing montage of autistic children, seen at the same institution in discrete, vivid moments of repose, reverie or trance, SEULS marks an encounter at once rapturous and serene. Filmed in a luminous black-and-white evocative of an even earlier era, its subjects appear at times curious but more often merely tolerant or indifferent before the camera (its scrutinizing lens, no doubt, already a part of their monitored world). But the tacitly charged portraits prove deeply humanizing and even collaborative in their formal response to the insistent rhythms and expressions of the children, all of them very much agents in the making of this hauntingly beautiful work.
In a final act of defeat or defiance, a man builds a sinister contraption. This darkly humorous low-budget short film satirises the typical male pursuits of physical toil and precision craftsmanship. The Contraption is directed by James Dearden who would go on to write Fatal Attraction (1987) and stars The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Richard O’Brien.
Ammonites were a kind of snail-like precursor to today’s mollusks, common in the seas of the Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago. They are among the most commonly found fossils, so they must have been extremely plentiful. In this meditative and largely unstructured first feature, a young geologist is traveling by train to visit his sister in the countryside after having received a disturbing and mysterious letter from her. As he travels, he remembers his childhood fixation with rocks, nurtured by his mother, and his very strong affection for his sister.
O Sangue (Blood), tells the story of seventeen-year-old Vincente and his ten-year-old brother, Nino, who must face the departure of their abusive father and its aftermath. With the aid of Vicente’s girlfriend, Clara, the trio attempts to pick up the pieces of their fractured family life while confronting an unwelcomed uncle and mobsters who try to collect debt that their father left behind.