Stéphane Rossi

Takeshi Kitano is an international icon. We know the actor, the multi-award-winning filmmaker, but many ignore his double personality: the crazy TV star, the street kid from Tokyo close to the Yakuza, and the political satirist who blasted taboos! Can we dream of a better guide to introduce us to the cultural history of Japan?

It’s the last dictatorship of Europe, caught in a Soviet time-warp, where the secret police is still called the KGB and the president rules by fear. Disappearances, political assassinations, waves of repression and mass arrests are all regular occurances. But while half of Belarus moves closer to Russia, the other half is trying to resist…

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, rape has been used as a tool of war by the Syrian regime against thousands of women: a crime against humanity. The women who speak in this film have decided to break the silence. Their testimonies are rare, exceptional and heartbreaking. They are the voices of the untold crimes of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

Johnnie got his gun is a mix of interview snippets with To, these are taken from various sources and are cobbled together with clips from including Breaking news, P.T.U and The Mission amongst others. It seems Montmayeur did do an interview but it's so chopped up and mixed in it feels insignificant. Prominent members of casts and crew also feature in interview form but again from many different times and sources.

Christopher Doyle is one of the best known and most acclaimed directors of photography in world cinema. Born in Australia, he sees himself as an Asian citizen rather than a Westerner. His artistic contribution to the films of Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Jimou and Fruit Chan films, among others, is indisputable. Filmed in DV and Super8, this documentary is a kind of wild and stylized road movie -- from Bangkok to Hong Kong, via New York. The camera follows this eccentric and outrageous artist as he gives us his thoughts on his past and present work. From the recent sets of Invisible Waves by Thailand's Pen ek Ratanaruang, and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, to the locations in Hong Kong where he shot some of his most famous pictures, such as In The Mood for Love and Dumplings, Chris Doyle talks about his cinematic fascination for Asian culture.