Gewalten 2022
2h 28m | Drama | Release date: May 11, 2023 (Germany)
Storyline:
Thirteen-year-old Daniel lives with his older brother and terminally ill father in a village plagued by rural exodus. There, the young people live their lives between rare bus stops, xenophobia, unemployment, illegal dog fights and chemical intoxicants, among other things. Daniel stands between childhood and adolescence, and in the face of the indifference and stagnation of his surroundings, he becomes the victim of inhuman conditions that force him into a painful loneliness.
Vracenky 1991
1h 34m | Drama | Release date: November 1, 1991 (Czechoslovakia)
Storyline:
In the fifites the 10 year old boy Honza lives with his single mother in Prague. The mother is a dedicated communist in the beginning but she changes her mind when a show trial is held. She speaks about her dissatisfaction with the government and is immediately arrested. Honza is given to another family.
Louis, enfant roi 1993
2h 40m | Biography, Drama, History | Release date: April 21, 1993 (France)
Storyline:
The title of this major French costume drama means “Louis, child-king”, and indeed it’s a fascinating fresco about the formative years of the young king Louis XIV, before he became the Sun-king at Versailles. It was a dark and violent period, when the Louvre (meaning ‘wolves hunt castle’, hunting was a major aristocratic pastime), then still the somewhat gloomy royal palace, was the battle field of palace intrigues while the regency was held by queen-mother Anne of Austria but the actual head of the royal government was the aging cardinal Giulio Mazirini (‘Mazarin’), the less-known Italian successor of Richelieu, who also introduced to the court and the kingdom a host of his countrymen from whom Louis would learn the passion for Italian culture, especially music which would flourish under the direction of Lully (but that later story is another movie, “Le Roi danse”). The elaborate script sketches the story of French power politics, too complicate and devious to summarize in any detail, but mainly from the viewpoint of the immature king under maternal guardianship, who probably didn’t comprehend half of the grave troubles focusing on the strife between the official Catholic church and those claiming freedom of religion, especially for the Huguenots, but in reality mainly driven by personal and family ambitions and the grip of nobles on the kingdom at the expense of the royal power, and climaxing in a full rebellion, known as the Fronde, which forces the royal family to flee for their lives, an experience that may have decided Louis to dedicate his reign to preventing a repeat by establishing absolutism as he did. Some narration is done by Louis’s younger brother Philip, the duke of Anjou, who seems smarter but as the spare heir is condemned to life in a golden cage, overshadowed by Louis while any ‘disrespect’ for his crowned sibling is punishable on the spot by strap lashes administered on his bare behind by a servant.
Promiscuidade, os Pivetes de Kátia 1984
1h 30m | Drama | Release date: 1984 (Brazil)
Storyline:
Mauro, a young railway engineer and happily married to beautiful Kátia, lives in complete harmony with his father-in-law, Sergio, Kátia’s brother, Beto, Adriana, Paulo’s wife and Kika, Beto’s girlfriend. On one of the family’s trips to the railway terminal, Mauro suffers a violent fall and falls into a coma. Hurriedly taken to the hospital, however, he recovered due to the severity of the internal injury, he becomes definitely impotent. Mauro, uncomfortable with the new situation, is drunk all the time, becoming a dead weight for the family and especially for his young wife. The family spends every weekend in a small farm on the banks of a dam and there, they give vent to all sorts of libidinizations. The maid Nora now has sex with Sergio, now the alleged head of the family. Adriana besides having relations with her father-in-law, she also has Nora and Beto, who in turn also fucks Adriana, her sister-in-law. Claudinha, a young surveyor comes to know Marcos and they start a romance and have sex. Kátia, who had already tried everything, finds a new way in a boat dock. Boys fishing every day. Win their friendship and start having sex with everyone. Spreading the fact, the kids line up to have sex with her. The family can no longer stand the situation, and Mauro is always half drunk and has fun with everything.
An erotically-charged drama by the late Park Chul-soo, intertwining stories of three characters whose joy, passion and despair played out on the same bed are tangled like a puzzle.
Birds Without A Nest 1996
Ptitsy bez gnyozd (original title)
1h 29m | Biography, Drama | Release date: 1996 (Belarus)
Storyline:
A film based on Belarusian poet Larisa Geniyush’s memoir. Despite living through the difficult times and being in emigration, she fought for freedom in her homeland and expressed devotion to the nation and it’s language.
Body Switch 1995
Farligt venskab (original title)
1h 28m | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi | Release date: October 6, 1995 (Denmark)
Storyline:
An elite sports doctor with 2 months to live offers to help a basketball team, so as to find a healthy boy to switch bodies with. A teenager wakes up to find himself in the old doctor’s dying body.
Mondo Magic 1975
Magia nuda (original title)
1h 25m | Documentary | Release date: January 24, 1975 (Italy)
Storyline:
This film is about tribes in Africa and South America who turn toward magic as a means of survival and way of life. The Mundari tribe in Africa herd cattle but do not slaughter them for meat. They make use of the cattle urine as an insect repellent and shower underneath their cows. They also use the dung as a body covering to further thwart insects and pest. The cattle are so prized to the Mundari that they are treated as a member of the family and a number of Mundari are shown puffing into the cattle’s vagina to encourage an early birth. A hunt is then shown where the Mundari are able to bring down mighty Elephants and Giraffes with ease. Yet unlike sport hunters they hunt merely for survival and pay respect to the beast before eating them. The Dinka tribe is another group who praise their cattle but they bleed the cows and mix it in their milk to help sustain tribes during periods of hunger. They also migrate to different areas along the Nile as to not over consume their pastures. The camera then moves to the South American continent where The Yanawana people are shown in their full glory. They sleep in simple hammocks and allow their dogs every freedom. One woman is even shown suckling a puppy along with her own child. Hunters prepare to catch their meal and a feast of spiders, crab and tapir is enjoyed by all. The Yanawana hold a gathering each year where the shamans drink a mixture of the crushed skulls of their dead shamans to transfer the soul and release it to the heavens. Psychic healers in the Philippines are shown next, they appear to do surgery without leaving scars and impress those around them. Christians are then shown self inflicting wounds as a form of penance to their saints. The cameras move back to Africa where children in Ethiopia have their Uvula removed for no real reason known to us. An Arab woman takes her daughter to a woman called a Marabou and has her checked to insure she is still pure, others use her services to heal themselves with holy messages from the Koran. The final scene has a tribe which takes woman and uses them as fertility gods, they help insure fertility and a big family.
