The Painting Pool (2013)
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The plot follows the story of twin brothers, one is a coldhearted violent police officer, the other is a helpless romantic with a mental disability. The two brothers are tragically involved with a prostitute who works in the bordello that gives the film its title. The film was adapted from an eponymous novel written by Juan Marsé.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their âinner-idiotsâ and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.
Acclaimed Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses) directs Monica Bellucci and Iranian superstar Behrouz Vossoughi in this haunting, dreamlike love story that spans three decades. (TIFF)
Football coach Harold Jones befriends Radio, a mentally-challenged man who becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. Their friendship extends over several decades, where Radio transforms from a shy, tormented man into an inspiration to his community.
An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.
In 1940, a struggling poor young man falls for a girl who must pay a terrible price to save her mentally disabled brother by marring a powerful shrewd businessman.
In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison. Making his directorial debut, Jon Stewart tells the tale of Bahari's months-long imprisonment and interrogation in this powerful and affecting docudrama featuring a potent and performance by Gael GarcÃa Bernal recounting Bahari's efforts to maintain his hope and his sanity in the face of isolation and persecution-through memories of his family, recollections of the music he loves, and thoughts of his wife and unborn child.
Oasis is a love story of two young people abandoned by families. A young man released from prison visits the widow of the man he killed drink-driving. There he meets her daughter, wheelchair bound with cerebral palsy. Will these two lost people find a way to make their relationship work?
An Iranian man drives his truck in search of someone who will quietly bury him under a cherry tree after he commits suicide.
Anjali (Shamili) is a story of a mentally disabled child and the emotional trauma experienced by her family of four â a young civil engineer Shekar (Raghuvaran), his wife, Chitra (Revathi) and their two young children Arjun (Tarun) and Anu (Shruti).
In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Kurdish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. When Lateef is given heavier tasks to compensate for new Afghan worker Rahmat, he resents his displacement and treats Rahmat cruelly. After one of his pranks, however, Lateef discovers Rahmat's secret--he is a girl named Baran. Latif's heart softens towards Baran and he shows his new affection for her by doing what he can to ease the hardships she suffers at work. revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.Baran is a 2001 Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi, based on an original script by Majid Majidi. The movie is set during recent times in which there are a large number of Afghan refugees living on the outskirts of Tehran. Almost a silent movie, Baran won a number of awards both nationally and internationally for the director and writer Majid Majidi.
Two drifters, one a gentle but slow giant, try to make money working the fields during the Depression so they can fulfill their dreams.
Behrani, an Iranian immigrant buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send his son to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy. After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer and befriends a police officer. Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.
Based on actual events that took place at Gwangju Inhwa School for the hearing-impaired, where young deaf students were the victims of repeated sexual assaults by faculty members over a period of five years in the early 2000s.
As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.
Karl Childers is a mentally disabled man who has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12 for killing his mother and her lover. Although thoroughly institutionalized, Karl is deemed fit to be released into the outside world.
Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.
A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.
For Shirin, being part of a perfect Persian family isnât easy. Acceptance eludes her from all sides: her family doesnât know sheâs bisexual, and her ex-girlfriend, Maxine , canât understand why she doesnât tell them. Even the six-year-old boys in her moviemaking class are too ADD to focus on her for more than a second. Following a family announcement of her brotherâs betrothal to a parentally approved Iranian prize catch, Shirin embarks on a private rebellion involving a series of pansexual escapades, while trying to decipher what went wrong with Maxine.
The feeble-minded Sven's mother dies and he gets work as a farm-hand at the rich, affluent Höglund's farm. He has to work without pay and sleeps together with the cows. He meets the disabled Anna who is the first one to treat him as an adult. One day he has had enough of Höglund's maltreatment and moves in with Anna's family. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
Paris-Tehran. A rootless love story between Gecko, young and free, and Anahita, an Iranian woman in exile - tangled up in History and steeped in Internet, unique and spontaneous
An independent tragicomedy, Run If You Can is the debut feature for director Brüggemann who, along with his sister, also wrote the compelling screenplay. Forced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, Ben is deeply desperate, despite his humor and vivaciousness. When he meets Christian, his new assistant, Ben treats him like every other helper heâs had. Things suddenly change when Christian meets Annika, âthe cello playerâ whom Ben has been observing from his window for years. The three become close friends, putting Annika in the middle of an emotional, and somehow dangerous, ménage à trois. While conquering Annika is nothing very serious for career-focused Christian, Benâs love for Annika reminds him of his past and forces him to face his most remote fears. A character-driven story, Run If You Can owes much of its power to the actorsâ performances, especially Robert Gwisdekâs outstanding interpretation of Ben.
Youssef, a blind university professor, is suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease and must undergo treatment in France. Back home, will he find the life he had before?
After her mother decided that the eighteen-year-old mentally disabled Dora no longer has to take psychotherapeutic drugs, the young woman begins to blossom. The sedated teenager was never a problem for her surroundings â but new challenges arise when the pleasure-loving young woman discovers her sexuality. The family is threatened to fall apart.
The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.
Ranjit Mehra and his wife Sonia live a middle-class life in rural India. Ranjit's passion is studying the heavenly bodies through various computers, telescopes, and communicators as he believes there is life beyond Earth. He continuously transmits the sound generated by the syllable "om" and hopes that someone somewhere will hear this and respond to it.
An 8 year old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.
Martha Horgan is a withdrawn, mentally disabled woman who lives with her aunt, Frances. One of Martha's unusual traits is that she doesn't lie, a quality that leads to her getting fired from a dry-cleaning shop thanks to the actions of the shifty Getso. Conflict seems to follow Martha, since she also becomes romantically involved with local fix-it man, Mackey, who is sleeping with Frances as well.
When his brother disappears, mentally disabled Langston Bellows (Gbenga Akinnagbe) is left without a protector in Brooklyn's housing projects. Now under the control of his abusive mother (Alfre Woodard) Langston must take his future into his own hands. He sets out to find the one doctor he believes can cure him, a celebrity magazine columnist who touts questionable prescription drug cocktails. If Langston can become "mentally excellent", it will mean moving into an apartment of his own with his girlfriend, who may herself be a creation of his wishful thinking. Landing in the unscrupulous world of pharmaceutical marketing, the search for his mysterious doctor and hero leads to some unwanted discoveries. Langston strives for independence from his prior life; from his mother, from his neighborhood and from his fractured mind - while all around him people are not who they seem.
After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...
Alone for the first time and away from her family in rural Philippines, Rosa Dimaano arrives in the cosmopolitan city state of Singapore to work as a maid. Her employers Mr and Mrs Teo runs a Chinese Teochew dialect opera troupe takes well to their new domestic help. So do their mentally disabled son, Ah Soon. In Chinese superstition, the seventh month of the lunar calendar is regarded as the month when the gates of hell open for forsaken spirits to walk the earth for 30 days. Unknown to Rosa, she arrives on the eve and her hell is about to begin.
A neo-nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devotional priest.
After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.
A glamorous woman returns to her small town in rural Australia. With her sewing machine and haute couture style, she transforms the women and exacts sweet revenge on those who did her wrong.
This film tells the story of a semi modern Iranian couple, who are trying to fight the old beliefs & old generation. This is a failing battle because the man is not strong enough.
Ed Franklin, a young man pursuing his dreams in Hollywood, returns home to Fort Worth, Texas at Christmas time to find his family in turmoil. His parents' marriage is crumbling and his relationship with his two brothers is rocky at best. The discovery that his beloved Granny has been placed in a nursing home after a stroke left her mentally disabled pushes Ed over the edge. He decides to come to his unhappy Granny's rescue, abducting her from the home against his family's orders. Ed's father Rex and brothers, Steve and Davy, set out after Ed and Granny, and a cross-country pursuit begins.
Iranian musicians Negar and Ashkan look for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visa that allows them to leave Tehran to do so.
Sang-eun is a pretty 20 year old girl, that is warm hearted and possess an extraordinary gift for folding paper into various figures. She has a loving mom and friends, but she is also mentally retarded. She has the intelligence of a 7 years old. Sang-Eun learns everything slowly, but there are still a lot of things she does not know about. She is fixated with the idea that she will meet the prince of her dreams, like in the fairy tales she so often reads.
A sensation when released in 1999 in Iran, Two Women charts the lives of two promising architecture students over the course of the first turbulent years of the Islamic Republic. Tahimine Milani creates this scathing portrait of those traditions - aided by official indifference - which conspire to trap women and stop them from realizing their full potential; the inclusion of frank depictions of domestic violence was hailed by many as a breakthrough in dealing with a long taboo subject.
An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.
Ed Okin used to have a boring life. He used to have trouble getting to sleep. Then one night, he met Diana. Now, Ed's having trouble staying alive.
Actor / writer / director Erich von Stroheim stars as a fraudulent count, living high on the hog in Monte Carlo. He supports himself by extorting huge sums of money from silly married ladies who are dumb enough to fall for his romantic charms. Von Stroheim's partners in crime, phony princesses Mae Busch and Maud George, live in a state of perpetual depravity with the count in a huge mansion. Their latest victim, played by an actress who insisted upon being billed as Miss DuPont, is the wife of an American financier. Von Stroheim's attempted seduction of this particular foolish wife is thwarted at every turn, and the count ultimately gets his comeuppance.
Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.
After being tricked into thinking his best friend, and caretaker is dead, Vietnam Vet, and mentally disabled person has no other choice but to enter The Arena Of Death!
THE BRIGHT DAY weaves a story that has its roots in the complexity of Iranâs draconian laws governing capital punishment. A kindergarten teacher hopes to aid the father of one of her young students, a man accused of manslaughter, by convincing each of seven reluctant witnesses to come forward. No one lacks a hidden agenda in this drama in which shades of truth collide with self-interest and the specter of payback. (Gene Siskel Film Center)
Oligophrenic Fany (Bohdalová) lives with her aunt who suddenly manages to travel abroad. Fany has to move to her sister (Jirásková). Two very different women, one mentally disabled and the second one intelligent doctor has to live together and learn from each other about tolerance, loneliness, life and why call dogs "Mister".
A young man's drive to avenge for his sister and brother.
An impoverished mentally disabled boy in Vietnam learns to deal with the loss of both of his parents.
The movie is centered on a couple, Nader and Simin, and their 11-year-old daughter, Termeh. Nader and Simin are about to leave the country for good; however, Nader has a change of heart and decides to stay and look after his father who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Simin is determined to get a divorce and leave the country with her daughter, but the court does not find in her favor. Simin goes to live with her mother and Termeh returns to live with her father with the hope that her mother will be back some day.
Based on the award winning novel by Tarjei Vesaas, The Birds tells the tale of Mattis, a mentally disabled man cared for by his lonely older sister, Hege. Their everyday routine and isolated existence is interrupted when a lumberjack arrives at their lakeside cottage and falls in love with Hege, leaving Mattis fearful that he will lose his sister.
The Traveler is a 1974 Iranian drama film directed by Abbas Kiarostami that tells the story of Hassan Darabi, a troublesome, amoral 10-year-old boy in a small Iranian town. He wishes to see the Iran national football team play an important match in Tehran. In order to achieve that, he scams his friends and neighbors. After a number of adventures, he finally reaches Tehran stadium at the time of the match. The film addresses the boy's determination in his goal and his indifference to the effects of his actions on other people, particularly those who are closest to him. In its element, the film is an examination of human behavior and the balance of right and wrong.
Mateusz is an intelligent, romantic young man tragically trapped inside his own body, suffering from severe cerebral palsy that makes speech and controlled movement nearly impossible. Born into a loving family, Mateuszâs protected world is shattered when circumstances place him in an institution where he is misunderstood and mistreated. Featuring an astonishing, virtuoso lead performance, Life Feels Good beautifully recounts the true story of one manâs extraordinary efforts to endure in the face of impossible odds.
The advocate for a young Iranian refugee held in detention. Amir Ali claims to be an Iranian student persecuted by the government but the Department of Immigration dispute his identity. When Julia meets Amir, he is severely depressed and close to deportation. Julia throws herself obsessively into Amir's case, causing friction between Julia and her husband, Peter. Julia eventually frees Amir and the young Iranian man moves in with Peter and Julia. As Julia helps Amir adjust to ordinary life, she finds herself increasingly attracted to this handsome, damaged young man. But she also starts to see the subtle cracks in Amir's story. Is he really who he claims he is? Or does he have a darker, more dangerous history?
Based on a true story. Donna Lee Shelby (Kirstie Alley), a mentally retarded girl who lives in Forest Haven, an institution for the developmentally disabled, meets Ricardo Thornton (Delroy Lindo), a fellow resident. When Forest Haven is closed by a court order, Donna and Ricardo venture into the real world on their own. Their friendship and dependency on each other blossoms into love. They marry and have a child together, who does not suffer from mental retardation.
The story of an Icelandic man and his slow descent into madness. Along his journey he meets Dagný, the initial cause of his breakdown. Other people he meets in the asylum have been committed for various reasons, such as signing cheques for Adolf Hitler and, believing themselves to be writing songs for the Beatles and telepathically transmitting to the band.
Mustafa Moradi is aching to find a girlfriend. On the other end of the city, Linnea is desperately searching for a guy with style, courage and a burning passion.
Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.
Turtles can fly tells the story of a group of young children near the Turkey-Iran border. They clean up mines and wait for the Saddam regime to fall.
A sharp-edged look at people who live outside the constraints of Islamic law.
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