Carleton’s International Film Forum presents films from all around the world in weekly screenings at the Weitz Center Cinema. The Fall 2016 series runs from September 26th through November 14th. Most screenings are on Monday evenings at 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public.
Visit the IFF website for trailers and more information.
Week #3 (M, 9/26) – Charlie’s Country (Rolf de Heer, 2013, Australia, 108 min.) – Presented by Fred Hagstrom
“Using a combination of bleak realism, fatalistic humor and a healthy dose of sentimentality, Mr. de Heer traces the downward spiral of a man who has become a refugee in his own homeland.” – Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times
“Living in a remote Aboriginal community in the northern part of Australia, Charlie is a warrior past his prime. As the government increases its stranglehold over the community’s traditional way of life, Charlie becomes lost between two cultures. His new modern life offers him a way to survive but, ultimately, it is one he has no power over. Finally fed up when his gun, his newly crafted spear and his best friend’s jeep are confiscated, Charlie heads into the wild on his own, to live the old way. However, Charlie hasn’t reckoned on where he might end up, nor on how much life has changed since the old ways.” – Synopsis
Week #4 (M, 10/03) – Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Marc Rothemund, 2005, Germany, 120 min.) – Presented by Juliane Schicker
“This gripping true story, directed in a cool, semi-documentary style by the German filmmaker Marc Rothemund from a screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances.” – Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.”- Synopsis
Week #5 (M, 10/10) – Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke, 2015, China/France/Japan, 131 min.) – Presented by Shaohua Guo
“Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart is a mysterious and in its way staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a filmmaker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“Mr. Jia has characterized Mountains May Depart as his most emotional movie, which may underplay how deeply moving his work can be. While he invariably addresses larger cultural, social and political issues, sometimes openly, at other times obliquely, what makes his work memorable is how those larger forces are etched in the faces and bodies of his characters, in the coal dust that defines one man’s reality — and, by extension, one China — and the hard mask that defines another truth, another China.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Week #7 (M, 10/24) – Freedom Moon (Kim Sungwoon, Japan, 2016, 119 min.) – Presented by Noboru Tomonari, Skype interview with director follows the screening
“Hakamada, 79, was sentenced to death for the 1966 murder of four members of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture. Just 32 at his sentencing, he maintained his innocence and waged a long-running campaign for retrial.
He was freed in March 2014 after the Shizuoka District Court decided to reopen the case and suspended his death sentence. The move came after DNA tests showed bloodstains on clothing used as evidence was not Hakamada’s. – Keiji Hirano, The Japan Times
“The film draws close to the ordinary life after 48 years of a man, who was incarcerated for 48 years facing death, as he regains his lost time and identity, and quietly tells a story of the preciousness of living.”- Synopsis
Week #8 (M, 10/31) – Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015, Colombia/Venezuela/Argentina, 125 min.) – Presented by Jay Beck
“A visually mesmerizing exploration of man, nature and the destructive powers of colonialism, Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente) marks an impressively realized third feature from Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra, featuring knockout black-and-white cinematography and an array of breathtaking locations.”-Jordan Mintzer,The Hollywood Reporter
“At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, SERPENT centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.”- Synopsis
Week #9 (M, 11/07) – A Stray (Musa Syeed, 2016, USA, 82 min.) – Presented by Kao Kalia Yang, Skype interview with director follows the screening
“A contemporary, vital yet untold story, A STRAY explores what it means to be at home—and what it means to be a stray—in a constantly changing world.”- Jerome Foundation
“Set in Minneapolis and based a small community of Somali immigrants, A Stray follows Adan, a young Somali refugee whose life is turned upside down by the entrance of a stray dog in his life. It’s a quiet film, but one whose steadily directed hand and careful composition makes it stand uniquely as an updated twist on the traditions of the day-in-a-life film featuring a uniquely necessary look at immigrant life.” – Aubrey Page, wheretowatch
Week #10 (M, 11/14) – Gemma Bovary (Anne Fontaine, 2014, France/UK, 99 min.) – Presented by Scott Carpenter
“In this vibrant seriocomic re-imagining of Flaubert’s literary classic Madame Bovary, life imitates art in uncanny ways when earthy British beauty Gemma Bovery (Gemma Arterton) and her furniture restorer husband Charles (Jason Flemyng) move to a charming ramshackle old farmhouse in the very same Norman village where the novel was written a century earlier.
Their welcoming neighbor, local baker and Flaubert expert Martin Joubert (Fabrice Luchini), becomes entranced with Gemma and sets out to be her guide and mentor to her new surroundings. It doesn’t take long before he is drawing parallels between the literary and real life woman, while he insinuates himself into her life.
As reality sets in on the fantasy of rural French domesticity, the Boverys’ marriage begins to fray and Gemma finds herself at loose ends. She soon catches the eye of a handsome young playboy and when her magnetic ex suddenly reappears, she finds herself at a crossroads and seems to be fulfilling Joubert’s worst fears that her destiny is linked to that of Flaubert’s
doomed heroine. Director Anne Fontaine’s (COCO BEFORE CHANEL) clever adaptation of Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel Gemma Bovery is at once a cheeky literary mash-up, a sensuous romance, a witty feminist commentary and a heady celebration of French provincial life.” – Music Box Films