Roger Kass

Movies

Emptying the Skies
Director
If you want to impress your dining companions in Cyprus, it's not caviar that you order, but ambelopoulia: a tiny songbird. But as this gripping doc reveals, the cost to bring such delicacies to the table is enormous. Bestselling novelist Jonathan Franzen takes a break from the world of fiction to guide us through an all too horrifying reality: tens of millions of protected migratory songbirds are illegally killed every year. Franzen, a longtime bird lover, accompanies young staffers of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter on their expeditions. With police enforcement in Southern Europe practically non-existent, they risk their lives to rescue trapped birds, and confront hostile poachers. It's a topic that proves a cultural flashpoint -- the Cypriot landowners cannot understand why a bunch of Italians can tell them what to do on their land.
The House of the Devil
Producer
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret.
Peter and Vandy
Executive Producer
Flashbacks and flash-forwards illustrate the rise and fall of a love affair between two New Yorkers.
A History of Violence
Executive Producer
An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.
Edmond
Producer
Seemingly mild-mannered businessman Edmond Burke visits a fortuneteller and hears a remark that spurs him to leave his wife abruptly and seek what is missing from his life. Encounters with strangers and unsavory people weaken the barriers encompassing his long-suppressed rage, until Edmond explodes in violence.
Amateur
Legal Services
A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.
Button Man
Producer
Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Arthur Ranson, the movie tells the story of ex-military contractor Harry Exton, considered the first true hero of the post-truth age. Exton’s is a proxy in a clandestine competition among the super rich. Paid to fight to the death in modern-day gladiatorial contests, Exton sets out on a relentless journey to use these twisted elites’ own dark machine to bring their corrupt world crashing down.