  |
|
| Black Butterfly and Avida |
Avida (Country: France; Director: Gustave de Kervern Benoît Delépine; Writer: Benoît Delépine Gustave de Kervern; Cast: Gustave de Kervern, Benoît Delépine, Velvet, Claude Chabrol.)
Life in the surreal world.
US Premiere. Full Review
Black Butterfly (Mariposa Negra) (Country: Peru; Director: Francisco Lombardi; Writer: Giovanna Pollarolo; Cast: Melania Urbina, Magdyel Ugaz, Yvonne Frayssinet, Gustavo Bueno, Monserrat Carulla, Lluis Homar)
Right before the fall of Peru's President Alberto Fujimori in 2000, a demure schoolteacher conspires with a tabloid journalist to assassinate the brutal official responsible for her fiancé's murder. Peruvian auteur Francisco Lombardi based this dark tale of revenge and corruption on a novel by Alonso Cueto.
New York Premiere. See: Diary article about the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival
Das Fraulein (Fräulein, Das Fräulein) (Country: Switzerland; Director: Andrea Staka; Writer: Andrea Staka, Barbara Albert, Marie Kreutzer; Cast: Mirjana Karanovic, Marija Skaricic, Ljubica Jovic, Andrea Zogg, Pablo Aguilar, Zdenko Jelcic, Tiziana Jelmini, David Imhoof, Kenneth Huber, Sebastian Krähenbühl)
Two women from the former Yugoslavia have their perceptions and dreams altered by a young Bosnian with a lust for life.
New York Premiere. Full Review
The Devil Came On Horseback (Country: USA; Director: Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg; Writer: Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg; Cast: Brian Steidle)
The devil came on horseback is a documentary that exposes the genocide raging in darfur, sudan as seen through the eyes of a former u.s. marine who returns home to make the story public.
New York Premiere. Full Review Official Site
A Dirty Carnival (Biyeolhan geori) (Country: South Korea; Director: Yu Ha ; Writer: Yu Ha; Cast: Ho-jin Chun, In-jae Heo, Yoon Jae-Moon, Ku Jin, Byeong-chun Kim, Yun-Hee Kim, Tae-won Kwon, Bo-young Lee, Jong-hyeok Lee, Min Nam-koong, In-sung Zo)
Byung-doo takes on a high-risk mission to pay the bills for his widowed mother and siblings. But when he succeeds, he finds himself quickly rising through the ranks of South Korea's organized crime world, paving the way for this exceptional saga of greed, betrayal, violence and tragedy. The literal translation of the Korean title is "mean streets". New York Premiere.
  |
|
| Taxidermia and Fireworks Wednesday
|
Doubletime (Country: USA; Director: Stephanie Johnes; Cast: Ray Fredrick, Joy Holman, Antoine Cutner, Timothy Martin, Tia Rankin, Erica Zenn)
Skip-hop extravaganza.
New York Premiere. Full Review
Fireworks Wednesday
(Chaharshanbe-soori, Chahar shanbeh souri) (Country: Iran; Director: Asghar Farhadi; Writer: Asghar Farhadi, Mani Haghighi; Cast: Hedye Tehrani, Taraneh Alidoosti, Hamid Farokhnezhad, Pantea Bahram, Sahar Dolatshahi, Mehran Mahram, Hooman Seyadi, Behshad Sharifian, , ,)
On the last Wednesday before the spring solstice ushers in the Persian New Year, people set off fireworks following an ancient Zoroastrian tradition. Rouhi, spending her first day at a new job, finds herself in the midst of a different kind of fireworksan acrimonious domestic dispute between her new boss and his wife. Winner, Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival. New York Premiere.
The King Of Kong (The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters) (Country: US; Director: Seth Gordon; Cast: Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day, Mark Alpiger, Greg Bond, Craig Glenday, Brian Kuh, Robert Mruczek, Todd Rogers, Steve Sanders, Doris Self)
To those in the know, no classic arcade game is more difficult than Donkey Kong. Maybe that's why the world record holder is so protective of his celebrity. Look inside this world of competitive gaming, as obsession and ego drive a diverse and fascinating group of individuals to fight over who is the real king of Kong.
New York Premiere. Full Review Official Site
The Man From The Embassy (Der Mann Von Der Botschaft) (Country: Germany; Director: Dito Tsintsadze; Writer: Zaza Rusadze, Dito Tsintsadze; Cast: Burghart Klaußner, Lika Martinova, Marika Giorgobiani, Irm Hermann, Roland Schäfer)
The empty existence of a German official living in Tbilisi, Georgia, brightens when he forms a tenuous friendship with a 12-year-old girl living in one of the city's refugee camps. But corruption, violence and accusations of pedophilia taint their growing bond, echoing post-Soviet Georgia's uneasy relationship with the West. North American Premiere.
Nanking (Country: US; Director: Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman; Writer: Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman, Elizabeth Bentley, Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman; Cast: Hugo Armstrong, Rosalind Chao, Stephen Dorff, John Getz, Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Michelle Krusiec, Leah Liang Lewis, Chris Mulkey, Jürgen Prochnow, Sonny Saito)
During the 1937-1938 Japanese occupation of Nanking, an estimated 200,000 Chinese were killed and 20,000 raped. But an unlikely partnership of Nazi businessmen and American missionaries saved 250,000 lives. Using letters, diaries and interviews with survivors and Japanese soldiers, Nanking exposes a still-controversial episode of WWII. In English, Japanese and Mandarin. New York Premiere.
  |
|
| Das Fraulein and Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad In Afghanistan |
Shame (Country: Pakistan, US; Director: Mohammed Naqvi)
In 2002, Mukhtaran Mai, a woman living in a remote Pakistani village, was publicly gang raped to atone for a crime her brother allegedly committed. Instead of killing herself, as she was expected to do, she raised an outcry that became an international cause. A powerful essay in courage. New York Premiere.
Taxidermia (Country: Hungary, Austria, France; Director: György Pálfi; Writer: György Pálfi, Lajos Parti Nagy, Zsófia Ruttkay; Cast: Csaba Czene, Gergely Trócsányi, Piroska Molnár, Adél Stanczel, Marc Bischoff, Gábor Máté, Zoltán Koppány, Géza D. Hegedüs, Erwin Leder, Géza Balkay, Attila Balogh)
Three generations of grotesque goings on in Hungary.
US Premiere. Full Review See: Tribeca Film Festival Diary Days Seven and Eight
Tootie's Last Suit (Country: US; Director: Lisa Katzman)
Former Mardi Gras Indian Chief Tootie Montana is a New Orleans icon, famed for his brilliant handmade carnival costumes. When he decides to stage a late-life comeback, however, bitter family rivalries erupt. Filmed pre- and post-Katrina, this colorful portrait celebrates the resilient spirit of a man determined at all costs to preserve a vital cultural tradition. New York Premiere.
