The Necessities of Life (2008)
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Childhood friends reunite later in life in Spanish tuberculosis sanitorium. Pressures of death all around combine with dark secrets of their past.
Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her.
Jung is a mortician at the morgue, who has to rely heavily on medicine for his severe tuberculosis and arthritis. Despite his illness, cleaning and dressing the dead is a noble and even beautiful work. His life over there is both a reality and a fantasy while the corpses are his models and friends for his paintings, his sole living pleasure. Why this morbid hobby? Jung was adopted by a horrible woman who used him as a slave for her dress shop. The natural son of the woman is younger than Jung and has a strange desire. He wants to transform his male body into a female one. Despite the love and hate relationship Jung has with his brother and burdened with the weight of life and the difficulties he has to deal with at his job, Jung endures the pain and prepares a last gift for his brother...
The story of 16-year-old Riyo who journeys to Hawaii in 1918 to marry a man she has never met, except through photographs and letters they have exchanged. Hoping to escape a troubled past and to start anew, Riyo is bitterly disappointed upon her arrival: her husband is twice her age and Hawaii is not the paradise she expected. As Riyo comes to terms with her new home, she discovers a land full of hardship, struggle--and unexpected joy.
The war film that's not a war film. A film about the mental institution which backdrop is the Chechen war. A story about the patients living in an institution during the war on the border of Chechnia and Russia during the war. The patients have to continue living their day to day life after being invaded twice over, and they have to deal with their sicknesses.
An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawaâs Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers, who eventually give in to the most terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinemaâs most versatile filmmakers.
A seasoned detective is called in to rescue a politician held hostage by a lunatic. In a brief moment of uncertainty, he misses the chance for action. Leaving his job and family without explanation, he makes his way to a mountain forest, encountering a peculiar tree called Charisma.
Romances end in blood and the frail hopes of individuals are torn apart in a vile karmic continuity of colonialism, civil war and occupation. After surviving Japanese colonization, Korea became the first war zone of the Cold War. The legacy of war remains today in this divided country. Three forlorn teenagers, Chank-guk, Jihum and Eunok are figures in the landscape of this story, which highlights the global implications of a very Korean reality. None of them is able to escape the withering pull of tragedy. All desperate pleas for love and redemption are returned stamped in red with "Address Unknown".
A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.
A sickly young woman experiences visions of her dead mother. She struggles to determine if the apparition is simply a side effect of her daily medication, or her mother actually reaching out to her from beyond the grave.
A political drama about Stalin's prison-camp system in Russia.
Fusako, a drug dealer's young mistress in postwar Japan, loses her tenuous grasp on life upon learning about her lover's affair.
In Barrow, Alaska, teenagers Qalli and Aivaaq find their bond tested when a seal-hunting trip goes wrong, resulting in the death of their friend.
The poor Italian peasant boy Francesco already has visions of Jesus and Mary as a child, but the Devil visits him too. He, Francesco, is quite certain that he will become a priest. After entering the Capuchin Order it becomes clear that Padre Pio (his new name) has powers which can not be explained rationally: he heals the sick, knows the names, problems and future of complete strangers.
Kinichi and Akiko meet when they visit their fathers in prison. After successfully gambling on a bicycle race, they spend an enjoyable day together at the beach. Akiko, who tries to make money as an artist's model to pay for her mother's medical expenses, now has to find 100,000 yen to pay off the company from which her father embezzled. Kinichi also requires 100,000 yen as bail for his father, who is accused of election fraud. Kinichi tries to borrow 100,000 yen from his mother, whom he has not seen for three years.
After eight years of marriage to Liyan - once rich but now a shadow of his former self following a long, ruinous war - Yuwen does little except deliver his daily medication. A surprise visit from Liyan's friend Zhang re-energises the household, but also stirs up dangerously suppressed longings and resentments.
Shortly after WWII an American soldier (Norman) and a Polish refugee (Emilia) fall in deep love. Eventually he will return to USA and both expect that she will soon follow him. Emilia's mother is sick but would recover by available medicine. Somehow the mother but not Emilia knows that there will only be one ticket. Realising that Emilia would never abandon her, the mother secretly throws away the daily doses given her by Emilia - and dies
"Africa United" tells the extraordinary story of three Rwandan children who attempt to realize the dream of their life: to attend the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup 2010 at Johannesburg. But the problems begin when Fabrice, Dudu and Béatrice get on the wrong bus and end up in Congo. Without papers, without money, they are brought into a children's refugee camp. But with incredible ingenuity, a some guts and a poster for the World Cup as a map, our heroes escape from the camp and leave to pursue their dreams, bringing with them a "dream team" of refugee children to help them through a series of exciting adventures. During this journey of 5000 km through seven countries, the film reveals an unseen Africa.
Twin Sisters is an epic love story based on the Dutch bestseller by Tessa de Loo that has been read by more than 3.5 million readers in Holland and Germany.
Nazi POWs suspected of heinous acts are locked up in a Soviet women's prison run by vengeful female guards. To weed out the guilty, the innocent must pay. Can supposed enemies turn into great loves? Based on a true post-World War II story, this drama stars Thomas Kretschmann, John Malkovich and Vera Farmiga in a bitter game of cat and mouse and a battle between hate and humanity, mercy and revenge.
Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.
A bush pilot in nothern Canada who with the aid of modernity thinks he can handle it all & knows it all. After reluctantly agreeing to transport a local indian girl to a medical facility his light plane crashes & they have to survive whilst finding their way back to civilization. Along the journey the man finds a new respect for the native ways as they battle to survive the elements.Strangely this movie is barely rated as it's viewed as one of the best & most moving films by all who've watched it.
During the summer of 1937, Emanuel, a young man in his early twenties, is committed to a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast for treatment of his bone tuberculosis. The treatment consists of painful spine punctures that confine him to a plaster on a stretcher-bed. Little by little, as Emanuel gets accustomed to the sadness of his new life, he discovers that inside the sanatorium there is still a life to be lived to the fullest.
The Wind Rises is the 11th animated theatrical film directed by Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli. Based on Miyazakiâs own manga and the 1937 short novel of the same name by Tatsuo Hori, this is the story of JirÅ Horikoshi, the aircraft engineer most remembered for his design work on the Mitsubishi A6M Reisen âZeroâ, Japanâs famous World War II fighter aircraft. During the WWII years, the Miyazaki family business manufactured aircraft parts, including the windshields and rudders used on the Zero.
An old aristocrat, short of money, who does not accept the new world ruled by the bourgeois class ,epitomized by the industrialist and by the doctor who finally grabs the the aristocrat's castle which soon will be turned into a hospital.
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A fourteen year old lad discovers his first love at the point of his pencil whilst drawing the portrait of a sickly but coquettish fifteen year old girl. In the neighbourhood an old freedom-fighter pits himself against bad types, a pretty cinema-ticket girl takes to the streets at night and a young anarchist dedicates himself to telling tall stories. Far away, in Shanghai, a hero of the Republic meets a beautiful femme fatal with oriental eyes. Reality and fiction become fused in an embrace.
Shortly after World War II, the city of Rio de Janeiro experiments a period of great cultural, political and economic effervescence, when all the dreams â or nearly all â seem possible. In this exciting scenery of transformation, Paulo discovers love, friendship and sex through his childhood and adolescence in the 1950âs and 1960âs.
Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets.
Ebbo and Vera Velten have spent the better part of the past twenty years living in different African countries. Ebbo is the manager of a sleeping sickness programme. His work is fulfilling. Vera, however, feels increasingly lost in Yaoundeâs ex-pat community. She canât bear the separation from her 14-year-old daughter, Helen, who is attending boarding school in Germany. Ebbo must give up his life in Africa or he risks losing the woman he loves. But his fear of returning to a land now remote to him increases with each passing day. Years later. Alex Nzila, a young French doctor of Congolese origin, travels to Cameroon to evaluate a development project. Itâs been a long time since he set foot on this continent, but, instead of finding new prospects, he encounters a destructive, lost man. Like a phantom, Ebbo slips away from his evaluator.
French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.
Robert Ryan leads a group of Allied agents fighting an underground Nazi group in post-war Europe.
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Edward Scissorhands is a classic Tim Burton and Johnny Depp film about a small suburban town that receives a visit from a castaway unfinished science experiment named Edward. A satire on the normality of Middle-America and their fear of outsiders. A magical fairytale story of loneliness, learning, and love; that will make you laugh, curse, and cry.
A young woman, Chloe, living by her wits on the streets of New York City, has a chance meeting with a wise Inuit Eskimo, Theo, who was sent to New York by his elders to provide a message to the people of the world â We either change our destructive was or be destroyed by them. Chloe, who has been searching for something to believe in, becomes inspired by Theo and , with the help of a kind lawyer, Monica, the three of them present Theoâs story to the United Nations in hopes of creating a better future for all of us.
Based upon the life of activist and trade unionist (and later MP) Sonja Davies. The film covers her life up to 1956, when, at age 33, she was elected to the Nelson Hospital Board. During this period she develops strong socialist beliefs, marries and divorces, at age 17 trains as a nurse, has a romance (and a child) with an American marine who is killed in WWII action. She battles tuberculosis and marries a former boyfriend when he returns from the war. She becomes part of a women's ill-fated campaign to save the Nelson railway line from closure and begins to be elected to political bodies.
Love. It just happens. No rules. It may look sick, but it's deep and it hurts. For everyone, Alex and Kiki are just good friends. They happen to be two girls experiencing another kind of love. For their family, Kiki and Sandu are sister and brother who sometimes fight. They happen to be lovers. Love Sick is about their stories.
In desperation brought on by near-starvation, Helge Roos kills his master's ox and feeds it to his wife and baby daughter. No-one suspects anything until the meat is finished and Helge tries to sell the hide at a local market. He is spotted by the local vicar and, wracked with guilt, confesses. The vicar assures him that if he gives himself up, he'll be treated leniently, but Helge's sentence is far harsher than anyone predicted...
Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.
Su Fen, a young and frail girl, looked forward to her wedding with her fiancé, Li Kuo-liang. The happy couple's bliss was cut short when war broke out. Kuo-liang was summoned to fight at the front lines. In his absence, Su Fen discovered she had tuberculosis.
A couple, Fred (Henry Kendall) and Emily Hill (Joan Barry) , living a mundane middle-class life in London, are given a small fortune by an uncle as an advance against their future inheritance so that they can enjoy it in the present. Immediately Fred takes leave from his job as a clerk and they leave on a cruise for "the Orient". Fred quickly shows his susceptibility to sea-sickness while crossing
W. Somerset Maugham introduces three more of his stories about human foibles.
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
In the 1930's, Agaguk lives his traditional Inuit life. But one day, there is a murder in the tribe and Agaguk becomes a suspect. Soon he becomes persecuted by Henderson, a mean mountie, and he must flee through the cold winter of Northen Quebec.
Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building.
True story of the doctor who considered it was not immoral to search for a drug that would cure syphillis.
Francis and Blake Falls are Siamese twins who live in a neat little room in a rundown hotel. While sharing some organs, Blake is always fit and Francis is very sickly. Into their world comes a young lady, who turns their world upside down. She gets involved with Blake, and convinces the two to attend a Halloween party, where they can pass themselves off as wearing a costume. Eventually Francis becomes really ill, and they have to be separated. They then face the physical and mental strains that come from their proposed separation.
Story of the dream of a lonely woman lying mentally ill in a sanatorium.
Greenland, 1908. Josephine, self-confident and bold wife of famous Arctic explorer Robert Peary, embarks on a dangerous journey in pursuit of her husband who is seeking a route to the North Pole. But Josephine is also naïve and ignores warnings from experienced polar travellers about the onset of winter. At great sacrifice the expedition reaches Peary's base camp. Josephine refuses to go home and wants to spend winter in the hut. Only the young Inuit woman Allaka, who lives in an igloo and knows about the cold, stays with her. As the long nights draw nearer, Josephine realises she has more in common with this woman from a different world than she thought.
Young boy leaves the Oklahoma farm to travel with his country musician uncle who is trying out for the Grand Ole Opry. Set during the Great Depression.
Lora Hart manages to land a job in a hospital as a trainee nurse. Upon completion of her training she goes to work as a night nurse for two small children who seem to be very sick, but something much more sinister is going on.
Yong-soo is an ex-soccer player who lives in a small coal-mine village in North Korea with his wife and young son, Joon. Although living in extreme poverty like many other families in North Korea, the family is happy just to be with each other. Then one day, Yong-soo's pregnant wife becomes critically ill. Let alone medicine, Yong-soo can't even find food for her in North Korea. So he decides to secretly cross the border to China hoping to find the medicine for his wife.
The classic stage hit gets the Hollywood treatment in the story of Elwood P. Dowd who makes friends with a spirit taking the form of a human-sized rabbit named Harvey that only he sees (and a few privileged others on occasion also.) After his sister tries to commit him to a mental institution, a comedy of errors ensues. Elwood and Harvey become the catalysts for a family mending its wounds and for romance blossoming in unexpected places.
Sibilla works as a dancer in El Dorado, a cabaret in Granada (Andalusia, Spain) trying to earn enough money to take care for her sick child.
Joey Norton, seven years old, lives with his older brother Lennie in a lower middle class neighborhood of Brooklyn. Joey is too small to be taken seriously by Lennie and Lennie's friends. One day, while their mother is away visiting her sick mother, Lennie and his friends play a joke on Joey. They stage an incident so that Joey thinks he has shot and killed his brother. Francois Truffault credits this classic with inspiring the French New Wave.
Jason Priestley stars as Peter Radwell, a big-city lawyer dispatched up north to take on the case of an Inuit man (Natar Ungalaaq) accused of murder. With the help of psychiatrist Dr. Macy Olsen (Kristin Booth), Radwell discovers his client is part of a shadowy world of rituals and superstitions that may explain the murders. Andrew Currie's suspenseful made-for-TV thriller is based in part on real-life events
Gabrielle Van Der Mal gave up everything to become a nun. But her faith and her vows are forever being tested: first in the missionary Congo hospital where she assists the brilliant and handsome Dr. Fortunati and then at the mother house in France when World War II has broken out and the nuns are forbidden by the order to take sides.
Grace is a religious woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.
A German immigrant to a small American town is a widower with four children and a barber. He has saved enough money to invest in a partnership in a savings-and-loan company with a friend. But a son has been stricken with tuberculosis, and the investment money goes to pay for the son's treatment in Arizona. The man continues to be a barber. Twenty years later, the wastrel son of the now-rich man who was to have been his partner, falls in love with the barber's daughter.
How tenuous is man's hold on civilization when survival becomes an issue? When the lights go out and stay out for several days, suburbanites Matthew and Annie learn the hard way that man is "by nature" a predatory creature. Matthew's long-time friend, Joe, happens by on the second day and a rivalry between the two friends simmers as Annie cares for her sick baby. . Is this what is meant by "man's inhumanity to man?"
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