Mambéty describes what would be his final film as “a hymn to the courage of street children,” but like all of his works, it is also a hymn to Senegal, to post-colonial Africa and to resourceful visionaries like the courageous girl of the title. Undaunted by poverty or handicap, the young Sili Laam leaves her blind grandmother begging in the street to seek out a better existence for them both. As the only female newspaper seller, she encounters constant obstacles along the way, yet reacts by simply standing up for herself and others. Nonchalantly fighting for equality and justice, Sili’s courage and resilience are depicted with a mix of joy and hardship, but no saccharine.
Tag: FRANCE
Bank executive Rainier allows his firm to deliver adventurous investor Chevalier d’Aven a huge loan, with what he thinks is his employer Mirement’s total backing. Chevalier’s business proves indeed to be disastrous, which forces the bank to cover up its high deficits. News of the scandal breaks out, and the bank now sees Rainier as the one being responsible for it – he is laid off. Wife Celine and union representative Arlette suggest he should sue his former boss.
Sexual escapades with a parade of beautiful women distract an American Author trying to establish himself in post WWI Paris. Henry, the young author, travels through brothels and the streets of Paris, making friends and falling in love along the way. The dark underbelly of the city is explored in nights of drunken revelry as Henry’s exploits become increasingly lascivious.
Director Gaspard Bazin is working on a new feature film. For now, he’s still looking at the fundraising and casting stage of the process. He calls upon Jean Almereyda, a once-fashionable producer who is now going through a bad patch, finding it increasingly difficult to raise the capital he needs for his ventures. His wife Eurydice dreams of being a movie star. A perverse game between the two men ensues, with Almereyda wanting to please his wife, but reluctant to demand a role for Eurydice because of Bazin’s reputation as an incorrigible seducer.
A thoughtful and emotionally challenging look at the lives of two children living in modern day Afghanistan, STRAY DOGS lifts the lid on what it is like living in the country, post-Taliban. The film focuses on a young brother and sister who are forced to share their incarcerated mother’s prison cell by night, but roam the streets during the day. For they are homeless; only allowed to stay within the prison’s confines after dark, the children are not permitted there during the day. Fed up with having to fend for themselves, and in a desperate bid to get locked up on a more permanent basis, the siblings concoct a cunning plan; using American cinema as a guide, they begin to perform robberies on the streets of Kabul.
Bank robbery in small town ends with one of the robbers being wounded. The loot from the robbery is just an asset for the even more spectacular heist. Simon, gang leader and Paris night club owner, must also deal with police comissaire Edouard Colemane, who happens to be his good friend.
In its sixty-five minutes, Paz Encina’s first film, carries Ramón and Cándida, an aging couple living in the deep country, from sunrise, when they hang their old hammock between two trees in a clearing, to sunset, when they take it in. Settled in its tenuous grasp, they talk about the heat, the rain, the dog that won’t stop barking, the war, and their son, Máximo, who is doing his military service and hasn’t been heard from lately. The father lives in hope, the mother in fear, and scenes of their daily rounds of labor and rest—images of a contemplative pictorial exaltation—are joined by voice-over flashbacks revealing the story of their son’s departure and the rumors that followed.
CIA agent Derek Carpenter is dispatched to Peru to track down former revolutionary-turned-drug lord Luis Montana. Once there, matters become complicated when he becomes embroiled in a turf war between Montana and another faction led by the seductive Elena, and doubly so when he falls for Montana’s daughter.