Phantom Pain
Year: 2009
Country: German
Genre: Drama
Director: Matthias Emcke

Accidents Happen

Year: 2009

Country: Australia

Genre: Drama / Comedy

Director: Andrew Lancaster

Mark: 1 to 5 [4]

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Get here the movie with English and Portuguese – Br subtitles.

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Bilal
Year: 2008
Country: India
Genre: Documentary
Director: Sourav Sarangi

Mark: 1 to 5 [1]

Plot: The story begins inside a small partitioned room in central Kolkata. Almost nothing is visible inside. In fact, Bilal’s parents don’t need any light to see things around; they are blind. Bilal is just three years old and he has an infant brother. Both can see. So together they live as if in a game of seeing and not seeing. Though of a very tender age, Bilal is fully aware of the physical handicap of his parents. He knows how to communicate with them through sounds and touch. He is never jobless – be it guiding his blind parents through the traffic or training up the art of making mischiefs to his brother. Whenever Bilal is in the mood for mischief, his parents become strict, and their son jumps into the world outside. Bilal tastes life on street from his elders – it’s hard. But he never gives up. Very unusually for our times, Bilal’s upbringing and care seems to have become a collective responsibility of all the neighbors. The film tells this curious story by observing the little boy over a year and capturing rare moments of sharing love, fun, cruelty and hope.

Personal View: Reading the plot you could imagine a wonderful movie, that s what I thought. A home-made movie, no-sense, few illumination that can remind us of  Christiane F. , this is a movie of kind that you think that can’t be worse, than few scenes after, it’s worse. The worst movie I saw at Film Festival!

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Zero
Year: 2009
Country: Poland
Genre: Action /Drama
Director: Pawel Borowski

Mark: 1 to 5 [1]

Plot: The day rises in a huge unspecified metropolis. A cell phone rings in a big manager’s cabinet on an international corporation’s building. A businessman looks at the cell’s screen for a while, and then he finally answers. It is a sloppy fat guy calling from a van, driven together with his strange friend. He asks for the decision regarding a certain person. After hesitating for a while, the businessman confirms the job. He does not suspect that his “yes” sets in motion stream of incidents which would affect fate of some persons. This is the beginning of multi-plot story, where the fate of many characters is interlaced by the consequences of their decisions.

Personal View: Imagine a suspense scene where all your emotions are all together waiting for the next moment, then a music very strong comes, for a while you think “What the hell? Had to be loud this way?” , but ok was a suspense scene so no problems, the movie is developing itself and you just don’t think and? The music again saying “Something is about to happen, get ready”. You can’t even pay attention to the movie, just wishing and praying to that music doesn’t come again, but it can torture you all the movie, so think twice to what this someday. Horrible, even the movie is good. Describing this movie in one word: Headache.

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That’s all folks ;*

Mamachas of the Ring
Year: 2009
Country: USA / Bolivia
Genre: Documentary
Director: Betty M. Park

Mark: 1 to 5 [2]

Plot: The story of Carmen Rosa the Champion, a cholita and wrestler who struggles to make it on her own in the male-dominated world of Bolivian professional wrestling. In 2004, Carmen Rosa was at the forefront of a cholita wrestler revolution. Never before had Bolivia seen an indigenous woman into the ring. Along with three other cholitas, Carmen became an international star, and all four were foram the Mamachas of the Ring. The film begins in 2006, shortly after their return from a star-making turn on Peruvian TV—but their rapid success has come at a price. Jealousy and envy begin to ripple throughout the wrestling community, and eventually they are black-listed from performing in Bolivia’s main wrestling league. Betrayed but not discouraged, the Mamachas take matters into their own hands. They pound the pavement organizing their own shows, contracting media appearances, and traveling for days to perform across Bolivia, often to paltry crowds who can barely afford to pay the entrance fee. The pressures of daily living and gendered responsibilities begin to eat away at the foundation of the Mamachas, and Carmen Rosa increasingly shoulders more of the work burden. Her day job as a street vendor begins to suffer, and her attention to her family dwindles, until one day her husband issues her a firm ultimatum: wrestling or your family.

Personal View: If you saw the trailer and the picture will normaly imagine ‘wow that s a nice movie’, but it isn’t. Nice to laugh a little but it’s a movie that starts great and makes you sleep after a little and just lose the end with no regret. Could be a much better.

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I Killed My Mother
Year: 2009
Country: Canada
Genre: Biography/Drama
Director: Xavier Dolan

Mark: 1 to 5 [5!]

Plot: Hubert Minel, a brash 17-year-old, dislikes his mother intensely. He gauges her with contempt, only seeing her out-of-date sweaters, her kitschy decor and the vile bread crumbs that lodge in the corners of her noisy mouth. Below the surface of these irritating traits, lie the ingrained mechanisms that his mother has always cultivated so dearly – manipulation and guilt. Hubert, confused and torn by a love-hate relationship that obsesses him more and more each day, wanders in and out of an adolescence that is both marginal and typical, combining artistic discovery, openness to friendship, ostracism and sex.

Personal View: Best movie. Just the fact that the director is the writer and also the actor and be a biography movie, says for itself. The conflict with the mother so strong and impossible to happens an agreement. Normally french movies are good, and this didn’t disappointed me at all. Never saw before a mother singing Edith Piaf in a middle of a discussion, just awesome! Highly recommended!

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Get here the movie.

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"Take my voice with you."

The Stoning Of Soraya M
Year: 2009
Country: USA
Genre: Crime/Drama
Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh

Mark: 1 to 5 [5]

Plot: Stranded in a remote Iranian village, a French journalist is approached by Zahra, a woman who has a harrowing tale to tell about her niece, Soraya, and the bloody circumstances of her death the day before. As the journalist turns on his tape recorder, Zahra takes us back to the beginning of her story, which involves Soraya’s husband, the local phony mullah, and a town all too easily led down a path of deceit, coercion and hysteria. The women, stripped of all rights and without recourse, nobly confront the overwhelming desires of corrupt men who use and abuse their authority to condemn Soraya, an innocent but inconvenient wife, to an unjust and torturous death. A drama that exposes the dark power of mob rule, uncivil law, and the utter lack of human rights for women. The last and only hope for some measure of justice lies in the hands of the journalist who must escape with the story — and his life — so the world will know. Based on the book of the same title by French-Iranian author Freidoune Sahebjam.

Personal View: Shocking movie, based in a true history to just feel even more cruel. Shows the cruelty without ‘why’ at Iran, until what point a human being can be unfair to another person to kill that person, tru stoning. Strong scenes that ill anyone. One of the bests movies of this film festival. Highly recommended.

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Get here the movie. [Movie with english subtitle only].

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Dear Lemon Lima
Year: 2009
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy / Fiction
Director: Suzi Yoonessi

Mark: 1 to 5 [4]

Plot: Vanessa Lemor, 13, a lonely Yup’ik girl, is dumped by her true love – intellectual Philip Georgey,14 – and spends the summer obsessing over the heartbreaking tragedy. She counts down the days to fall semester at Nichols School, a close-minded preparatory school in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the Georgey Family lives. Awarded the only minority scholarship, Vanessa’s new life is a nightmare. Back from a summer abroad and fluent in French, Philip is elevated to popular status, while Vanessa is relegated to life with the rest of the “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition”, FUBA. To make matters worse, she is elected captain for the school’s infamous Snowstorm Survivor competition, an event which simply perverts the traditional Native games of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics. But Vanessa believes that victory in the Snowstorm Survivor championship is the only way back into Philip’s heart. She quickly forms a quirky team of social misfits.

Personal View: Cute movie talking about relationships all the time, sometimes remembered Amelie Poulain at the screenshots and the fantasy. Emotional and laughing one. Typical  teenager’s things but also a kind of different view. I liked and I recommend.

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That’s all folks ;*