The Translator

The Whistle Blower

November 1986 •English

A war veteran tries to investigate the murder of his son who was working as a Russian translator for the British intelligence service during the Cold War. He meets a web of deception and paranoia that seems impenetrable...

Footprints on the Moon

February 1975 •Italian

Alice, a young translator, finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. A postcard leads her to the island of Garma where the locals seems to know her. Is she who she thinks she is? And what significance does her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon have?

The Woman in the Fifth

September 2011 •French

An American writer moves to Paris to be closer to his daughter and finds himself falling immediately on hard times.

Night Book

July 2021 •English

An interpreter is deceived into reading a passage from an ancient book that unleashes a demon that begins to possess people inside her home.

Tradurre

June 2008 •Italian

Shugaley 2

September 2020 •Russian

Russian sociologist Maxim Shugaley and his translator colleague Samer Sueifan are still being held in a Libyan prison. For more than a year, they have been subjected to torture and psychological violence on a daily basis. While in custody, Maxim Shugaley encounters various people who turn out to be, sometimes unknowingly, sources of information about the situation in Tripoli. Listening to their stories, the sociologist literally collects valuable information bit by bit, which can be decisive for the entire world community.

Quo Vadis, Aida?

February 2021 •Serbian

Bosnia, July 1995. Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp. As an insider to the negotiations Aida has access to crucial information that she needs to interpret. What is at the horizon for her family and people – rescue or death? Which move should she take?

Fear and Trembling

March 2003 •French

Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.

Lies

June 2016 •Japanese

This is the story about the life and artistic views of a designer through an interview that’s replete with poetic dialogue.

Blúdiaci Holanďan Ľubomír Feldek

January 2021 •Slovak

Translating Ulysses

May 2023 •Kurdish

Kawa Nemir is like a walking dictionary of the Kurdish language. He flees Turkey and takes refuge at Anne Frank's former house in Amsterdam. Will he be able to finish the translation of Ulysses and publish it?

Chuck Norris vs Communism

November 2015 •Romanian

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

From Subway with Love

April 2005 •Czech

This romantic comedy presents a story of two women, twenty-year-old Laura, an editor at a woman’s weekly, and her widowed mother, a translator-interpreter named Jana. The two of them tirelessly seek Mr. Right. Having once lived through an intense relationship with a ‘typical’ Czech man, Jana intentionally avoids Czech men. She searches for her dream foreigner while long-sufferingly warding off the tragicomic advances of her good-natured neighbor Žemla. After several unsuccessful attempts, Laura falls in love with Oliver, a forty year old who works as an ad agency idea man. Little does she suspect that twenty years ago Oliver was Jana’s true love…

Paul

April 2016 •Portuguese

There's a film subtitler. There's a film she must urgently subtitle. There's the plot of that film, with which she relates on a level that will remain enigmatic to us. And in that film within the film there's a main character, whose dreams are being devoured, and other characters, interested in dreams as well, but far more practical. And there¹s music, and a promise of music. Timelessly wandering through the world.

A Friend of the Deceased

September 1997 •Ukrainian

Tolla is an unemployed translator whose wife is leaving him. Despondent and weak, he submits to the suggestion of an acquaintance to have a contract placed on the man that his wife is seeing. Instead, however, he arranges for the hit to be placed on himself. Before the contract is executed, he develops a relationship with a prostitute, and then changes his mind. In order to survive he takes the obvious course of action, which turns out to have possibly been unnecessary, and then he must deal with the guilt.

Entrenched

July 2018 •English

Four Australian soldiers become compromised when they capture a young Afghani boy spying on their reconnaissance position.

Untitled Quo Vadis, Aida? Sequel

Invalid date •Bosnian

The sequel to "Quo Vadis, Aida?" will explore the tragic aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre and the wider Bosnian War, depicting the consequences faced by Bosnian women who lost their husbands and sons in the genocide and conflict.

Chuchotage

April 2018 •Hungarian

During a professional conference in Prague, two interpreters in the Hungarian booth hilariously vie for the attention of one listener.

Found by the One She Seeks

March 2023 •Czech

Petr Michal‘s meditative documentary follows the current life of an esteemed Czech literary translator, Anna Karenina. The film largely treats the relationship with her late husband, poet Petr Kabeš, and the feeling of loneliness she has been facing since his death. It is definitely not a conventional documentary portrait, since the director does not ask questions, and instead lets Karenina voice out her thoughts and feelings, observing her with a casual camera during work or on her mountaineering trips. The film also serves as an implicit proof of love to analogue medium: not only the book, but analogue film as well, with its invisible, yet almost tangible features.

First Cousin Once Removed

October 2012 •English

Filmmaker Alan Berliner documents his first cousin, the poet-translator Edwin Honig, as he succumbs to Alzheimer's.