Mamma Roma 1962
1h 46m | Drama | Release date: September 22, 1962 (Italy)
Storyline:
With a fervent yearning for respectability and enough money to buy herself a brand-new life in Rome, the uninhibited, fearless, determined former streetwalker Mamma Roma renounces her ignominious past to reunite with her loafing 16-year-old son Ettore. Free at last from her disgusting pimp and ex-lover Carmine, Roma is bent on making an honest living running a humble vegetable stall, but a malicious extortion scheme and the equally insidious menace of exposure threaten to put an end to her zealous aspirations for a decent bourgeois existence. For his own sake, Ettore must be spared the violence of the adult world; nevertheless, can a lone single mother protect her only son from the same snares that wounded her youth?
Norwegian Dream 2023
1h 37m | Drama | Release date: March 17, 2023 (Norway)
Storyline:
A 19-year-old Polish immigrant working at a fish factory in Norway has feelings for his colleague. A strike begins among the Polish workers at the factory testing their relationship, and with their fellow workers.
The Secret of Roan Inish 1994
1h 43m | Drama, Family, Fantasy | Release date: February 3, 1995 (United States)
Storyline:
10-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie – a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother washed out to sea in a cradle shaped like a boat; someone in the family believes the boy is being raised by the seals. Then Fiona catches sight of a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish and takes an active role in uncovering the secret of Roan Inish.
Among the Cinders 1984
1h 44m | Drama | Release date: July 1985 (United States)
Storyline:
Author Maurice Shadbolt went before the cameras to play father to the main character, in this adaptation of his acclaimed coming of age novel. Teen Nick is estranged from his family, and blaming himself for his Maori mate’s climbing death. He runs away to his straight talking grandfather – who takes him bush – and loses his virginity to Sally (a first film role for Rebecca Gibney).
A tender coming-of-age tale, Pashi follows a young boy from a Himalayan village as he fumbles through the maze of adolescence, infatuation, and queer identity. Siddharth Chauhan imaginatively uses dream sequences and folk traditions to tell an emotionally intricate story of desire.
Old Narcissus 2023
Ro narukisosu (original title)
1h 50m | Drama | Release date: May 20, 2023 (Japan)
Storyline:
74-year-old Yamazaki, an eccentric and prideful gay man, meets the young and lonely sex worker Leo, and for the first time in his long tumultuous life, falls in love with another person.
Rolltreppe Abwärts 2005
1h 11m | Drama | Release date: August 3, 1990 (West Germany)
Storyline:
13-year-old Joham lives with his single mother and her boyfriend somewhere in a poor area of modern Germany. Having no pocket money, he sometimes resorts to petty theft. His older buddy incites him to bigger thefts, and in the end the boy gets caught…
A Dog of Flanders 1999
1h 40m | Family, Drama | Release date: August 27, 1999 (United States)
Storyline:
Poor, but happy, young Nello and his grandfather live alone, delivering milk as a livelihood, in the outskirts of Antwerp, a city in Flanders (the Flemish or Dutch-speaking part of modern-day Belgium). They discover a beaten dog (a Bouvier, a large sturdy dog native to Flanders) and adopt it and nurse it back to health, naming it Patrasche, the middle name of Nello’s mother Mary, who died when Nello was very young. Nello’s mother was a talented artist, and like his mother, he delights in drawing, and his friend Aloise is his model and greatest fan and supporter.
The Railway Children 1970
1h 49m | Drama, Family | Release date: December 22, 1970 (United Kingdom)
Storyline:
In Edwardian England, the story of the Waterbury family is told largely from the perspective of the three offspring and by oldest, teenage daughter Bobbie. Their loving and relatively affluent family life in suburban London, financially supported by father Charles’ job as a government bureaucrat, includes both parents being a present and welcome part of their children’s activities. Their existence is upended when on Christmas evening 1904, Charles is whisked away without warning by two men. Subsequently, the remaining family is forced to move, they renting a rundown and drafty house, Three Chimneys, in the rural village of Oakworth, Yorkshire. While the three children know that they are now poor by their existence, all their Mother has told Bobbie is that Father is not dead, that he will someday return to them when he is able, and for Bobbie and the others not to ask questions about what happened to him. The three are now forced to find a way to occupy their time while Mother tries to earn pocket money by writing and selling stories, many of their activities which are centered on the railway near their house and the railway tunnel a few miles away from the village station. Their life along the railway at least addresses one of the complaints the three had about their life in London, that not much ever happened, which is not the case along the railway as they get into one adventure after another. In the process, they learn to enjoy life in their new situation, which includes the friendship and admiration of many of the villagers in all the Waterburys’ inherent kindness and generosity. But the question still remains, at least for the three children, of what happened to Father.
