Coming Closer

There, with me

August 1990 •Georgian

Directed by Zaza Khalvashi.

Father and Son

September 2003 •Russian

In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat to his bond with his dad, and breaks up with him. Aleksei is also experiencing nightmares, dreading separation from his father to be a part of the military as his father was.

An Unusual Exhibition

December 1968 •Georgian

The war is over. Once a young sculptor, and now a soldier, he returned home. Married, there were children. In search of work, he was hired to make grave monuments. Time passed... At one time, visiting a cemetery with friends, he saw with different eyes all his work done over the years...

White God

June 2014 •Hungarian

13 year old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen, and is devastated when her father sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to save her dog. Failing in his desperate efforts to find his beloved owner, Hagen joins a canine revolt leading a revolution against their human abusers.

The Way Home

January 1981 •Georgian

The way home for Aleksandr Rekhviashvili is not charted in the conventional sense. It takes the viewer along some peculiar roads and across a unique landscape: Georgian history and legend, politics and social stratification, religion and ethics. Allusive, stylized and allegorical from beginning to end, his long-banned The Way Home is in part a tribute to Rekhviashvili’s favorite director, Pasolini, especially to The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966). Together with the short film Nutsa (1971) and the widely acclaimed Georgian Chronicle of the 19th Century (1979; SFIFF 1983), The Way Home closes a triptych of films that represent Rekhviashvili’s poetic contemplation of Georgia’s past. It makes extensive use of poems by Bella Akhmadulina (the major female poet of the cultural ‘thaw’ of the ’50s and ’60s and a Georgian by descent), and of sets by Amir Kakabadze. Like other films in the trilogy, The Way Home is stunningly photographed in black-and-white.--Oxymoron

Who will die today?

June 1967 •Russian

This film ballad is dedicated to those who never returned home from WW2. A group of retreating Soviet soldiers, crossing a lunar terrain in a desperate attempt to escape death, is attacked by a German fighter plane that appears like a bolt from the blue. One by one they are killed. Then suddenly, in an unlikely denouement bordering on the mystical, the attacker is shot down with a simple rifle. For ideological reasons that defy understanding this film, one of Viktor Hres’ earliest works, was shelved in 1967 by Soviet censors. In 2010, it was restored by the Debut Studio of the Oleksander Dovzhenko Film Studio with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine.

American Nazareth

July 2022 •English

The short film (conveyed in a parable-like story structure) follows a man devoted to himself and the blessings of his attributed god. He struggles to survive a primitive life and is forced to take action to ensure his own prosperity.

The Nail in the Boot

December 1931 •Georgian

Banned in the Soviet Union for its "negative" content and never released, Kalatozov was forced to retreat from filmmaking for seven years because of this film. The film sets out to illustrate the old adage, "For want of a nail, the battle was lost," showing how the inferior quality of something so trivial as a nail in a soldier's boot leads inexorably to the capture of an armored train. Kalatozov had intended to demonstrate the crucial and universal importance of efficiency in Soviet industry, but the government decided that his fable gave a negative impression of the Red Army's capabilities.

Deliverance

June 2021 •English

Two monks on a mission choose very different paths

19th-Century Georgian Chronicle

December 1979 •Georgian

A poetized chronicle of the events taking place in one of the Georgian villages in the late 19th century, when, to save a forest, the innumerous intelligentsia could rally the people and oppose the industrialists…

Soldier's tale

July 1991 •Uzbek

Directed by Zulfikar Musakov.

Garib in the Land of Jinn

February 1977 •Azerbaijani

Walnut Bread

December 1977 •Lithuanian

Lithuania, 1977. Memories of childhood, adolescence, and first love in a small provincial town, shown through complexity of human relations at this periodical film.

Antes de las once

August 2008 •Spanish

A story about three adolescents as they address the universal challenges of growing up in a time where drugs, sexual promiscuity, delinquency, and suicide seem to run rampant.

Window Horses

March 2017 •English

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

Bringing Up Cruelty in Women and Dogs

July 1992 •Russian

A single woman's and her dog's personalities are affected by tough life circumstances.

Fuego en el alma

January 2002 •Spanish

Reflecting the closeness of Puerto Ricans in New York with those on the island, three stories among couples are combined to cast emotions of passion, jealousy, doubt and infidelity. The couples are burned by sudden and unexpected feelings and are pushed to make the decision that will change their lives forever influenced by the events of September 11th.

Time to Get Married

January 1960 •Russian

The Golden Madonna

May 1949 •English

Patricia (Phyllis Calvert) throws away a painting members of her Italian village consider to be extremely lucky. She goes to great lengths in her attempts to locate it again and bring it back.

The Enticement of Don Juan

February 1986 •Russian

Based on Lesya Ukrainka's drama "The Stone Master". Without the permission of the king, in Seville, under the pretext of meeting his fiancée Dolores, returns the disgraced Don Juan, a thunderstorm of husbands and grooms. The loveable protagonist gained fame as a ladies man and a wild tempest of female reputations. But for Don Juan there are no barriers to the desired goal. This time he laid eyes on the lovely Donna Anna. Obsessed with a passion for her, the hero protects her ancestral castle from the Portuguese invading the country ...