News from a Personal War (1999)
Genre : Documentary, Crime
Runtime : 57M
Director : Kátia Lund, João Moreira Salles
Synopsis
Documentary about urban violence in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro. Policemen, drug dealers, and shantytown dwellers get trapped into a daily war that knows no winners.
A young woman's plans to propose to her girlfriend while at her family's annual holiday party are upended when she discovers her partner hasn't yet come out to her conservative parents.
When three parents discover that each of their daughters have a pact to lose their virginity at prom, they launch a covert one-night operation to stop the teens from sealing the deal.
A 17-year old Missouri teen discovers she has gotten pregnant, a development that threatens to end her dreams of matriculating at an Ivy League college, and the career that could follow.
An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
The star of a team of teenage crime fighters falls for the alluring villainess she must bring to justice.
Two high school girls are best friends until one dates the other's older brother, who is totally his sister's nemesis.
Pennsylvania, 1993. After getting caught with another girl, teenager Cameron Post is sent to a conversion therapy center run by the strict Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, whose treatment consists in repenting for feeling “same sex attraction.” Cameron befriends fellow sinners Jane and Adam, thus creating a new family to deal with the surrounding intolerance.
In 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.
In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.
Ava, 13, is spending the summer on the Atlantic coast when she learns that she will lose her sight sooner than expected. Her mother decides to act as if everything were normal so as to spend their best summer ever. Ava confronts the problem in her own way. She steals a big black dog that belongs to a young man on the run...
Alice, a young innocent Catholic girl, is tempted into masturbating after an AOL chat suddenly turns sexual, however is conflicted as the act would be considered a sin.
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
Dr. Jean Markham returns to the town she left as a teenager to take over her late father's medical practice. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie in her surgery, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia into Jean's world.
19-year old Belle practices playing the violin diligently, but is unable to impart her music with a sensitive undertone. Her life changes when she discovers that sexual desire stimulates passion in her music.
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.
In the slums of Rio, two kids' paths diverge as one struggles to become a photographer and the other a kingpin.
A young female intern at a small magazine company becomes involved with a drug-addicted lesbian photographer, both of whom seek to exploit each other for their respective careers, while slowly falling in love with each other.
A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.
The city of São Paulo at the end of the 1920s. Urbanism, fashion, public monuments, industrialization, historical facts, coffee production expansion, education and the sound of daily life. Using the classic documentary Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) as a model, Hungarian filmmakers Adalberto Kemeny and Rodolf Lustig, who owned one of the best film laboratories that Brazil relied on at the time, made this documentary.
Joy is a fable about courage and youth. It tells the story of Luiza, 16 year old girl, who can not stand to hear about the end of the world… On a Christmas night, his cousin John is mysteriously shot in a street in the Lowlands and disappears into the night. Weeks later, while Luiza spends days alone in the apartment where he lives with his mother in Rio de Janeiro, a mysterious visitor comes knocking on your door: John, as a ghost, asking to hide there.
Fantasies and clichés about Brazil and Brazilians as reinforced by international films, even those actually shot in Brazil. This documentary features interviews with non-Brazilian directors, writers and stars who have been involved in some of those films.
Documentary about Santiago, a peculiar man who used to work for the director and his parents as a butler. The material was filmed in 1992 but, for some strange reason, the director felt he couldn't edit it and put it aside. In 2005 he remembers the unfinished film and starts its edition.
Based on Gabriel García Márquez's novel, this is the unsettling story of 13-year-old noble Sierva and the dog bite that changes her life forever. Abandoned, displaced, in the midst of a sexual awakening and finally exorcised, Sierva finds an unlikely ally in a young priest and together they discover passion.
Ustanička ulica is a Serbian political thriller. Dušan Ilić (Gordan Kičić), employed at the Serbian state prosecutor's office, gets a top secret case to investigate a war crime committed by a disbanded paramilitary unit. He manages to find Mićun (Uliks Fehmiu) who's the only surviving witness.
Ferding, Santos and Willy only drink in despair. One day, a Canadian woman’s visit changes everything.
A young rock singer meets his childhood heroine, a famous singer who is now wallowing in alcohol and sex.
Robert Castle is the idealistic pastor of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem, and also the cousin of filmmaker Jonathan Demme. Demme's affectionate portrait of his cousin traces Castle's story, beginning with his first parish assignment, in New Jersey in the early 1960s, in an increasingly African-American-populated neighborhood rocked by violence and civil rights protests. The film raises intimate discussions of race, faith and family, while also showing Castle's daily routine as a pastor.
'Bruce' goes to head with bandits who are terrorising and murdering villagers.
A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.
Jonathas lives with his parents and his brother, Juliano, in a cottage in a rural area of the Amazon. The family harvests and sells local products at a roadside fruit stand, a place of contact with new friends and novelties from the rest of the world. They meet Milly, a visitor from Ukraine, and the native Kedassere. The group decides to spend the weekend at a campground in the jungle. Against his father's wishes, Jonathas will embark on this adventure. Seduced by Milly and the forest, he undertakes his most transforming journey.
Film material is subjected to biochemical processes by burying it in the garden, storing it in a pond, or overheating it. The results of these natural processes of decay or aging are then copied back onto film and thus conserved in the state of their dissolution. - Lightcone
A young man in Uruguay has trouble expressing himself verbally. As the lead singer in a band, he interacts with the world through his music.
Brazilian director Julio Bressane directs this religious biography on the life and work of Saint Jerome, the monk who first translated the Bible into Latin. Set both in the desert and in the posh confines of the Vatican, Jerome (Everaldo Pontes) agonizes over which Latin word would best fit its Hebrew counterpart. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
Former political activist receives compensation from the Brazilian government for the disappearance of her husband, victim of the repression triggered by the Brazilian military dictatorship. With the money, she can buy her an apartment and free herself from this dreadful condition she lived for decades. At the moment of moving to the new home, however, a visit arises that forces her to review her entire life.
In 1999, Argentina's peso craters. Ariel, a young man from Buenos Aires' Jewish community, deals with his mother's fatal illness, finds a job as a night shift surveillance camera monitor, and wonders when he'll discover sex. Santamaria, middle aged, loses his bank job and is dismissed by his wife; he finds stolen wallets in dumpsters to return to their owners. Ariel tells Santamaria's story to a TV reporter who profiles lives on the street. She's Laura, in a relationship with another woman, but perhaps available. Ariel desires Laura, while Santamaria courts Elsa, a washroom attendant who's husband is in prison. Christmas and Hanukkah approach; can anyone connect?
The film Soleil Ô, shot over four years with a very low budget, tells the story of a black immigrant who makes his way to Paris in search of “his Gaul ancestors”. This manifesto denounces a new form of slavery: The immigrants desperately seek work, a place to live, but find themselves face to face with indifference, rejection, humiliation…until the final call for uprising. “Soleil Ô” is the title of a West Indian song that tells of the pain of the black people from Dahomey (now Benin) who were taken to the Caribbean as slaves.
SOMETHING NECESSARY is an intimate moment in the lives of Anne and Joseph. A woman struggling to rebuild her life after the civil unrest that swept Kenya after the 2007 elections claiming the life of her husband, the health of her son and leaving her home on an isolated farm in the Kenyan countryside in ruins, she now has nothing but her resolve to rebuild her life left. A young man, troubled gang member who participated in the countrywide violence is drawn to Anne and her farm seemingly in search of redemption. Both, Joseph and Anne need something that only the other can give to allow them to shed the painful memories of their past and move on.
Oryu searches for blind child she left behind and get involved in a Yakuza turf war that takes place in the Tokyo Theater.