The story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, who in 1858, after being secretly baptized, was forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son became part of a larger political battle that pitted the papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.
Afghanistan, 2014. As the withdrawal of troops approaches, Captain Antarès Bonassieu and his squad have been assigned a surveillance mission in a remote valley of Wakhan, on the border of Pakistan. Despite Antarès and his men’s determination, control of the secluded valley will slowly fall out of their hands. One dark night, soldiers begin to mysteriously disappear in the valley.
A Jewish pawnbroker, a victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
The childhood of the movie director Antoine Lisner, who left Algeria in 1962. In order to present his new movie, he comes back to Algiers with his son.
A desperate love story between two young girls of extremely different social backgrounds who, unable to find a place for their love in the world they live in, are pushed to commit a crime.
Princess is a young illegal immigrant from Nigeria who sells her body on the outskirts of a big city. Like an Amazon on the hunt, protected by her friends, she moves through a pinewood that stretches as far as the sea, an enchanted forest in which to find refuge, hide away from life and earn her daily bread. Every day, in order to survive, Princess has to steer clear of dangers and sentiments, follow the scent of money and dupe her clients. Her life is a succession of days that are always the same, one joins to another, without a break. Until one day, driven by an inner force to break the shackles of cynicism and exploitation, she quarrels with the friends with whom she shares the street and meets a man who wants to save her, but first she will have to save herself.
Kuwait’s constitution says that every person has the right to a job, so in some places 20 people are employed for one person’s job. In South Korea, they work so much that a policy has been introduced to turn off computers at the end of the day so that employees can’t work any more. In the US, they give up over 500 million holiday hours each year, while Amazon’s drivers are trying to form a union. Meanwhile, robots are poised to take over most jobs and put the rest of us out of work. Work is so crucial to our identity and what we spend our waking hours on that it is barely noticed anymore. A lot has happened since a group of Puritan priests invented the concept of work ethic in the 1600s, and in the 21st century the very concept of work is in many ways disintegrating. A perfect situation for a filmmaker like Swedish mastermind Erik Gandini, who travels the world to explore what the concept of work means today – if it means anything at all.
Billionaire activist George Soros is one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time. He is maligned by ideologues on both the left and the right for daring to tackle the world’s problems. With unprecedented access to the man and his inner circle, director Jesse Dylan follows Soros and pulls back the curtain on his personal history, private wealth, and public activism.
Through examining Fini Straubinger, an old woman who has been deaf and blind since her teens, and her work on behalf of other deaf-blind people, this film shows how the deaf-blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly isolated.
Blind Spot is a story about the grey zones in mental illness; the blind spots hard to discover, as experienced by a mother realizing her daughter struggling with far worse issues than she realized.
The film is a love story which tells the impossible tale of two youths who have never before met. The action unrolls in Paris between 1979 and 1980.
Mahdia, Tunisia. Fatma and her daughters, Najeh and Waffeh, work as “machtat”, traditional musicians who play at wedding ceremonies. Their music evokes love and its promises, but the reality is much more complex and painful. Between illusions and disillusionment, Machtat is a powerful and liberating portrait of three women asserting their voices.
Joanna Warczewska, daughter of an eminent writer, is at the peak of her life. Her thriving political career and family happiness are instantly destroyed by a terrorist attack in which her beloved husband is killed. When fate gives her a new chance in life, another blow hits her. Someone sends her photos and documents undermining her family ties and suggesting that her mother has collaborated with the Security Service in the past. Joanna decides to conduct a historical investigation on her own and unravel the mystery that casts a shadow on her family. What she discovers not only makes her look at her mother in a completely different way, but will also make her find her own identity. Joanna will be forced to face the blackmailer herself and make a choice that will change her life forever.
Samuele and Marzio, as teenagers, make a promise to be friends forever, but adulthood, women and everyday problems sneak into their lives.
Forging his own comedic boundaries, Anthony Jeselnik revels in getting away with saying things others can't in this stand-up special shot in New York.
Inspired by the work of an award-winning Italian novelist, this post-modern noir fantasy is centered on the image of a young poet and his aristocratic family. Set in the 1800s the plot develops around an ancient curse and a series of mysterious and terrifying events occurring on the family country estate. Featuring authentic period sets and costumes, the film is a metaphor of maturing and becoming, where death and rebirth intertwine and perpetuate each other in a continuous flux of life.
Compulsive spenders Albert and Bruno are in debt up to their necks. While seeking help from community workers to get their lives back on track, they run into a group of young green activists. Lured by the free beer and snacks rather than by the ideals of eco-activists, Albert and Bruno find themselves joining the movement without much conviction.
Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d'Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family.
School's out and 13-year-old Walter has lost his father. In his seemingly aimless wanderings around the Roman coast, a fascinating and mysterious place catches his eye: an abandoned villa with a huge, murky swimming pool. But the villa is not unguarded...
A sudden tragedy hits a wealthy middle-class family from North-East Italy. Tensions, hidden secrets and small hypocrisies emerge.
Savannah Duke-Morgan realizes her lifetime dream to bring her husband Brad and her five-year-old daughter Aria back to her birthplace on the Gold Coast of Australia until it turns into her worst nightmare when Aria goes missing from the resort’s Kidz Klub.
When a young girl is kidnapped, ruthless police inspector Peter Nadler embarks on a race against time to rescue her.
Veteran defense attorney Konrad Biegler and tenacious police inspector Peter Nadler face off in the trial of a man accused of kidnapping a young girl. (Abridged version of Enemies: Against the Clock and Enemies: The Confession, focusing on the ins and outs of the judicial process.)
William Blake, an accountant turned fugitive, is on the run. During his travels, he meets a Native American man called Nobody, who guides him on a journey to the spiritual world.
A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing them over to the law or lynching them on the spot.
A robust adventure about two British adventurers who take over primitive Kafiristan as "godlike" rulers, meeting a tragic end through their desire for a native girl. Based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling.
A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.
Larry Flynt is the hedonistically obnoxious, but indomitable, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his girlie magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for all people.
The lovely Maria Teresa is unhappily married with the impotent lawyer Marcello. Maria Teresa's marriage is contrasted by the passionate Valeria, who is killed during a chase. Is Valeria's husband the murderer? Maria Teresa helps him..
This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
A vampire relates his epic life story of love, betrayal, loneliness, and dark hunger to an over-curious reporter.
A touching story of an Italian book seller of Jewish ancestry who lives in his own little fairy tale. His creative and happy life would come to an abrupt halt when his entire family is deported to a concentration camp during World War II. While locked up he tries to convince his son that the whole thing is just a game.
Based on Anna Sewell's novel. In rural England of the 1880's, widower Squire Wendon is rearing his young daughter Anne. Her father has forbidden her to be present when their mare, "Duchess," gives birth. Anne sneaks out to the stable, however, and is discovered by her father who forbids her ever to ride Duchess again. Despite this punishment, he gives Anne Duchess's colt because it is her birthday, and she names him "Black Beauty."
Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.
In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.