The Headless Woman

La mujer sin cabeza
a film by Lucrecia Martel

A woman is driving on the highway. She becomes distracted and runs over something. On the days following this incident, she fails to recognise the feelings that bond her to things and people. She just lets herself be taken by the events of her social life. One night she tells her husband that she killed someone on the highway. They go back to the road only to find a dead dog. Friends close to the police confirm that there were no accident reports. Everything returns to normal and the bad moment seems to be over until the news of a gruesome discovery again worries everyone.

The film opens on a rural highway in north-west Argentina. A group of young boys with a dog are playing on the road and in the dry canal which runs alongside. Meanwhile, not far away, a group of friends, parents and children, prepare to leave a gathering. One middle-aged woman, Verónica, who runs a dental clinic with her brother, gets in her car and drives away by herself. On the road she is momentarily distracted when her cellphone rings and whilst reaching across for her handbag, she hears a loud thud from under the car. The impact throws her head back and then forward, hitting the dashboard. She stops the car, but disturbed and in shock, is unwilling to get out to investigate. Instead she drives off, and glancing in her rear view mirror, glimpses what appears to be the body of a dog on the road behind. Farther down the road she stops the car and gets out to walk around while the first drops of rain of an approaching storm begin to spatter the windscreen.

At the local hospital where Veró is x-rayed she appears confused and disorientated. She becomes disconnected from her daily life, barely registering what people are saying and what is happening around her. She is also unable to explain with any clarity anything about the accident but eventually tells her husband, Marcos, that she killed someone. That night he drives her back to the spot where it happened but they find only the body of the dog. Juan Manuel, her husband's cousin and her occasional lover, contacts a friend in the police who confirms that there were no reports of an accident that day. But one week later a missing boy's body is retrieved from the canal, washed down after the heavy rains and blocking the flow of the water. Veró's family and friends then join together to erase all traces of the accident ever having occurred.

Verónica's privileged life, her unwillingness to take responsibility for her actions, her feelings of guilt and remoteness from reality, all serve as a metaphor for the attitude of the bourgeois middle classes towards the suffering that surrounds them but which they refuse to acknowledge. The film, in linking the 1970s period of Argentina's dictatorship with the current time, calls attention to the fact that the blindness of the past continues to the present day in the growing disparity between rich and poor.

Cambridge Spies

A TV mini-series written by Peter Moffat and directed by Tim Fywell.

The story of Blunt, Burgess, Philby and Maclean, the most notorious double-agents in British history. In 1934, four brilliant, but seemingly conventional young men at University of Cambridge are recruited to spy for the Soviet Union. Fuelled by youthful idealism, passionately committed to social justice and to fighting fascism, they begin a 20-year career of deceit and treachery, becoming embroiled in obtaining and passing on vital information. Their careers take them from Vienna to Guernica, New York and Washington, with a final, desperate flight to Moscow.

Anthony Blunt is cool, viciously funny and terrifyingly clever, and is entrusted with the closest secrets of the Royal Family. Guy Burgess is wickedly gifted, full of nerve and verve. His jobs at The Times, BBC and MI5 give him access to national security secrets. Kim Philby is the perfect spy. He becomes head of counter-intelligence at MI6, "stopping people like us becoming people like us". Donald Maclean is the Foreign Office double-agent with a split personality; warm and funny, then wild and confessional.

The four do whatever is necessary to further the cause, with their own promising careers discarded and every aspect of their lives becoming a bluff. Marriages and passions are destroyed, Enigma codes, atomic details and other top secrets are passed on to Russian contacts, and Cold War spies are murdered. By the end of their careers they have become different men. Philby becomes the major agent, with Blunt retreating to the shadows, Maclean experiencing a family and career crisis, Burgess further misbehaving and almost always drunk. But during almost 20 years of counter-intelligence, and despite their personal journeys, the four are bound by their beliefs and their secrets.

A spy drama of the highest quality production, Cambridge Spies concentrates on the personal dynamics of the four men. It begins with a profound closeness based on a passion for a cause, and then moves on to shared sacrifices, stress, strain, and eventually breakdown and betrayal, closely observing the impact that events have on each individual's life.

Hedgehog in the Fog

Yozhik v tumane
a film by Yuriy Norshteyn

The story of a little hedgehog and his friend the bear cub. The two meet every evening to drink tea from the bear cub's samovar, which is heated on a fire of juniper twigs. As they drink their tea, they converse and count the stars together. On his way to meet the bear to count the stars, he passes through the woods and encounters a beautiful, white horse standing in a fog so thick that the hedgehog can't even see his own paw. He is curious as to whether the horse would choke if it lay down to sleep in the fog. The hedgehog decides to explore the fog for himself.

He finds himself in a surreal world inhabited by frightening shapes and creatures, such as an eagle-owl, moths and a bat. But also helpful, benevolent ones, like the snail, the dog and the mysterious 'Somebody' in the river. He discovers a world of silence and rustles, of darkness, tall grass and enchanting stars. He is frightened, but his curiosity keeps him exploring the unknown, and slowly he learns there is nothing to fear. The owl, which has been following the hedgehog, appears near him suddenly and hoots, only to disappear again. He explores a large hollow tree, then panics as he realises he has dropped the raspberry jam he was carrying. A large dog, which is initially frightening to the hedgehog, retrieves the jam for him. Later he falls into a river and believes he is going to drown as he floats downstream on his back until he is rescued by a mysterious Somebody, a catfish, in the river that 'speaks' to him silently.

We hear the voice of the bear cub anxiously calling to the hedgehog. When he finally appears, the bear is so relieved to know his friend has arrived safely but also because it means his life of routine and order is restored. He needs the hedgehog to sit with him and count the stars because that's how it has always been. Without the hedgehog his world would fall apart. He is safe within his comfort zone, happy to live his life without change, without challenge, without fear. He's happy to count the stars but would never once think about reaching for them. But the hedgehog is different. We see the hedgehog's expression, almost of regret, as he listens to the bear. He has now experienced the world in a different way, he has seen the magical world inside the fog, another dimension. He has felt the excitement of exploring new worlds, the fear of being lost, new emotions, new friends. As he sits on the log with the bear cub, he thinks how wonderful it is that they are together again. But he also thinks about the white horse in the fog and wonders, "How is she?". Although he is happy to continue the life he has always known, the hedgehog's world will never be the same again.

A beautiful, lyrical and deceptively simple film with the innocence and wonder of a child's view of the world. The inquisitiveness of a child exploring an unfamiliar and slightly frightening world for the first time. Its dream-like images, symbolism, haunting music and beautifully intoned narration, all combine to make this award-winning stop motion animation from 1975 such a delightful and unique experience.

Hedgehog in the Fog (YouTube)

Three Times

Zui hao de shi guang
a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Three stories of women and men, played by the same actors but set in different eras. The central theme is love and emotion, and the film comments on our different expressions of love in different periods of modern history. In the first story, based on the director's own experiences, a young man enlisted for military service falls for a beautiful girl in a 1960s pool hall. The second is set in 1911 when a courtesan falls in love with one of her clients, a political activist on the brink of joining the Chinese revolution. The third story, set in present-day Taipei, dramatises a love-triangle in which hidden passions arise when a beautiful bisexual singer becomes involved in a tangled affair with a photographer.

A Time For Love 1966, Kaohsiung
Chen meets May, who works at his favourite pool hall. They play pool together. Soon after he enlists for national service. On a day-release from the army, Chen comes to visit her, but he finds out that she has quit her job and no-one knows where she has gone. An atmosphere of tension is created as the lovers, perhaps like Taiwan itself at this time, must choose between remaining comfortable in their status quo or taking risks to engender more intriguing possibilities.

A Time For Freedom 1911, Dadaocheng
The owner of a tea plantation discusses buying out a young courtesan's contract when his son gets her pregnant. Mr Chang, despite his disapproval of the keeping of concubines, steps in to hasten negotiations, allowing the young couple to marry. Mr Chang then leaves for Japan to join a Chinese revolutionary who fled to escape persecution during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. However, he does not address the issue that his own courtesan is most concerned about – her personal freedom, and he remains indifferent as she expresses her longings. A historical moment which illustrates the gap between the desires of the man and the desires of the woman. He longs for revolution, and for the recovery of Taiwan from Japanese rule, whereas she longs for emotional security.

A Time For Youth 2005, Taipei
Epileptic and losing sight in her right eye, Jing is a singer in present-day Taipei. She lives with her mother and grandmother and also has a woman lover, Micky. Zhen, a photographer, works in a digital photo lab and lives with his girlfriend, Blue. When Blue finds out that Zhen has fallen for Jing, she hits the roof. When the insecure Micky realises her relationship with Jing is in danger, she threatens suicide. Where can the four of them go from here? None of them will find happiness. In the world of modern technology, cellphones and text messaging foster a lack of communication between today's apathetic and disaffected youth.

Hou Hsiao-hsien on the making of the film: "It seems to me that by contrasting love stories from three different times, we can feel how people's behaviour is circumscribed by the times and places they live in. For me, the film's Chinese title has a very specific resonance. If we speak of 'the best of our times', as invoked in the Chinese title, it's not that we have wonderful memories as such. What makes times 'best' is that they're lost and gone: we'll never have them again."

With beautiful cinematography and deeply moving performances, this trilogy of memory, romance and desire is a testament to the enduring power of love. Three times, three emotions, three affairs. A tender, bittersweet portrait of snatched moments of happiness and transient love.

Café Lumière

Kôhî jikô
a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou's centenary tribute to Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu, echoing many of Ozu's recurring themes – the breakdown of communication between parents and children, the rhythmic patterning of everyday life. The film paints a compelling and insightful portrait of contemporary Japan, focusing on the travails of Yoko Inoue, an independent young woman researching a project on the composer Jiang Wen-Ye. Born in Taiwan with Japanese nationality, Jiang was the talk of the 1930s and 1940s music world in Japan.

Yoko, a freelance writer becomes friends with Hajime, the proprietor of a secondhand bookshop, and the two spend a great deal of time together in coffee shops. Yoko was raised in the rural town of Yubari by her sight-impaired uncle, but has since created a good relationship with her father and step-mother. One day Yoko tells her parents that she is pregnant. The father of the child is a former boyfriend from Taiwan. Her parents worry for Yoko's future and her choice to become an unmarried mother. Yoko is a young woman who makes her way through life almost casually, not letting anything get her too upset or too excited. But now she must deal with both the concerns of her parents and the pressures and contradictions of her modern life.

As the original title Kôhî jikô suggests a feeling of "settling the spirit and facing the realities of one's life", so the film portrays the moments where Yoko and Hajime are about to restart their own lives. Although he cannot articulate his feelings, Hajime is filled with love for Yoko. In her daily life Yoko comes to re-evaluate her view of her family, Hajime, and the new life growing inside her.

Deftly drawing on the recurring Ozu theme of the relationship between ageing parents and their growing, increasingly independent child, the story plays out slowly, portraying real life with little artifice whilst evincing other things the eye cannot see. Hou reveals so much of the human heart through his quiet, unhurried style and his acute attention to the minutiae of life. Beautifully performed, with long, well-framed shots featuring natural sound and lighting, and incorporating one of Jiang's piano scores, Café Lumière is a gently compelling tale about everyday characters doing everyday things, expressed as pure cinematic poetry.

Adelheid

A film by František Vláčil

In the aftermath of World War II in the Sudetenland in Northern Moravia, a young Czech airman recently returned from service in the Royal Air Force, is given the management of a former German estate. There he meets the beautiful Adelheid, the former owner's daughter who once lived in the estate but is now reduced to servitude. The Czech airman falls in love with Adelheid, but lingering resentment and bitter political strife stand in the way of their happiness.

Though Czech-born and possessing the rank of lieutenant, Viktor Chotovický has spent much of the war in Aberdeen, Scotland, working in an RAF desk job. After a series of misunderstandings concerning his arrival that underline the dominant atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia, Viktor makes himself known to Inspector Hejna, and is charged with the task of looking after the Heidenmann's large country house and drawing up an inventory of its contents. It's a job that suits him perfectly, as he doesn't have to talk to many people.

Adelheid Heidenmann is initially assumed to be an innocent victim of widespread anti-German prejudice, but it transpires that she's the daughter of a notorious local Nazi war criminal currently on trial, whose inevitable execution is imminent. Each day she leaves the camp to clean the now unoccupied mansion house that was once her home.

In a near wordless exchange, Viktor finds himself enamoured by Adelheid, even though she is really his servant and has little choice under the circumstances. He allows her to stay in the house and tries to build her trust and affection, but with no common language he has to piece together Adelheid's life from visual clues, old photographs and letters. Soon Viktor discovers that it is impossible to exist in such a vacuum, especially at a time of national turbulence. Whatever his private feelings for Adelheid, it's politically and socially impossible to express them in public, even in a supposedly liberated country. Eventually he will discover that she's much more morally ambiguous than he first imagined, and has to confront his own conscience when he finds that she is sheltering her German-soldier brother.

A tragic, compelling and beautifully filmed love story that transcends the absence of verbal communication. It was, in 1969, the first film to controversially address the Czech treatment of Germans during the expulsions of the mid-1940s.

Flight of the Red Balloon

Le voyage du ballon rouge
a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien

A young boy, Simon, must deal with the increasing fragility of his mother, the loving yet preoccupied puppeteer Suzanne. Overwhelmed by the demands of her chaotic existence, Suzanne hires Song Fang, a Taiwanese film student, to help care for Simon. With Song, a unique extended family is formed, utterly interdependent yet lost in their separate thoughts and dreams. All this is mirrored by a delicate, shiny red balloon that hovers above the streets of Paris.

Suzanne, a single mother, is doing her best to raise her seven-year-old son Simon, whilst preparing her latest marionette production, based on the Yuan Dynasty story of Zhang Yu and his beloved, Qiong Lian. Song, a Taiwanese film student who has come to study in Paris and is making her own digital version of Le ballon rouge, is hired by Suzanne as a daytime nanny to take care of Simon. Song goes everywhere with her camera, filming everything she sees. Meanwhile, Simon is being followed by a red balloon that has grown attached to the boy.

The balloon, which seems to have its own personality, hovers over Simon and his family as Suzanne struggles with her daily life. Her entire working day is spent in rehearsal at the marionette theatre. She argues with her absent husband who has relocated to Montréal to write a novel and shows no sign of returning. She has to confront their tenant, Marc, who owes one year's rent and Suzanne must now set about obtaining an eviction order. She needs the flat for her daughter, Louise, who has been studying in Brussels but will soon be returning to Paris. The piano has now to be moved upstairs from Marc's flat in order to make things easier for Simon's piano teacher. As Suzanne's world becomes increasingly hectic and chaotic, Song Fang becomes ever more important in her life. In the end, it is Song's calming presence and Asian perspective that helps Suzanne regain control of her life.

In 1956, Albert Lamorisse made Le ballon rouge, a short in which a young boy, played by his son, Pascal, makes friends with a red balloon. Fifty years later, Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien's first French-language film is a beautifully shot meditation on the transience of life and the continuing impact of the past on the present. The film was commissioned by Musée d'Orsay and is inspired by Lamorisse's children's classic.

Revanche

A film by Götz Spielmann

A nature scene, late summer. A small lake in the woods, no people, silence. Not far away, a newly built house inhabited by a couple, Robert and Susanne. They live an ordinary life like so many other people. Meanwhile in Vienna, nightlife, a red light district, the world of prostitution. Here money rules and most people have jobs that barely allow them to scrape by. Like Alex and Tamara. She is a prostitute from Ukraine; he, the boss's errand boy. They are lovers, but they have to keep it a secret, since employees aren't allowed to get romantically involved.

They want to escape this life, but they need money. Alex devises a plan to rob a bank in a little village out in the countryside. Tamara wants to come along, and he reluctantly agrees. Everything is going exactly as planned until a policeman happens to walk up, Robert. He fires a few shots at the getaway car as it speeds off and accidentally hits the young woman. Overcome with despair, Alex leaves the body behind in a forest clearing. He lies low at his grandfather's desolate farm at the edge of the woods. Silent and withdrawn, Alex begins the task of chopping firewood for the approaching winter. He is consumed with pain, grief, and the hate he harbours for the man responsible for Tamara's death.

A lake in the woods is where Robert finds comfort alone, as he tries to sort out what happened. Alex begins to observe Robert, the policeman, spying on him, and following him as he goes about his daily routine. Then he meets Susanne, the policeman's wife. The lives of all these people will change as a result of Tamara's death, more radically than they suspect. Soon autumn will come, just like every year.

Writer/director Götz Spielmann on the making of the film:
"Revanche is a story – not theory enhanced by images. Maybe what my films are trying to do is to get to the bottom of life by focusing not on a social context but on existential questions. That's my passion, what sparks my curiosity, impels me: tracking down the substance of life, its essence deep down inside. There is, behind all the conflicts and painful things I show in my films, a fundamental spark of optimism – the conviction that life isn't a mistake, that it all somehow makes sense."

A tense and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forests of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

Szerelem

Love
a film by Károly Makk

Set in Budapest in 1953, János has been imprisoned on a false charge as a political dissident and sentenced to ten years. His young wife Luca does not even know if he is still alive. She frequently visits his bedridden mother and in an attempt to sustain her in her last few months, tells the elderly woman that her favourite son is in America, pursuing a successful career as a filmmaker. She fabricates letters supposedly from János telling his news and then listens impassively while his mother reads her the details. Luca herself is dismissed from her teaching job because of her and her husband's political beliefs.

During the exchanges between the two women we read the thoughts and memories of the mother, shown in brief flashbacks – photographs, events from her past or her imagined past – repeated sequences of images, details and textures of stunning beauty. As the dying woman's days grow bleaker, Luca struggles to keep her spirits up. She has also to contend with her own desperate loneliness, relying increasingly on the support of the mother's housekeeper, Irén. Finally, János is freed and he travels home almost in dread of what he might find there.

Makk's haunting and atmospheric film from 1971, brilliantly shot by János Tóth, captures exactly the fear and uncertainty of the time and is a treatise on how such times affect fidelity, faith, illusion and love. It explores, unsentimentally, a love composed of fortitude and forbearance, restraint and fear, with the belief that you may meet again, and the acceptance that you may not.

Mirror

Zerkalo
a film by Andrei Tarkovsky

In this, his most autobiographical work, legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky creates a profound and compelling masterpiece in which he reflects upon his own childhood and the destiny of the Russian people. With its unstructured and inconsistent movement back and forth through time, and its extraordinary and mesmerisingly beautiful images, it is cinema in its purest form, experienced as emotion rather than by intellect.

What began as a planned series of interviews with his own mother, evolved into a lyrical and complex circular meditation on love, loyalty, memory, and history. Often, a person's memories are vague, inconsistent and illogical, with little distinction between concrete memories, dream logic, and isolated events experienced as a child. Time shifts, generations merge, and the film's many layers establish the links which connect people – intertwining real life and family relationships with recollections of childhood, dreams and nightmares – images, episodes, and the sense of desperately clinging to something that has lost all meaning.

Tarkovsky's own memories as well as those of his mother are intermingled, as a dark, sumptuous, and dreamlike pre-World War II Russia is evoked, accompanied throughout by the voice of his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, reading his own elegiac poetry. Tarkovsky transmutes the love he felt for his own wife into his father's love for his mother.

The spectacle of nature and its ubiquitous and ever-shifting presence is magically captured by the camera – the family cabin nestled deep in the verdant woods, a barn on fire in the middle of a gentle rainstorm, a gigantic wind enveloping a man as he walks through a field of long grass – all creating indelible images with deep, if mysterious emotional resonance. As time shifts between the narrator's generation and his mother's, archive newsreel footage of Russian wars, triumphs and disasters are juxtaposed with imagined scenes from the past, present and future, crafting a silently lucid cinematic panorama of memory, history, and nature.

Laissez-Passer

Safe Conduct
a film by Bertrand Tavernier

Based on true events, the story depicts one of France's most controversial periods in history – the early 1940s during the Nazi occupation – against the background of the French film industry. It follows two men who struggle to maintain their integrity while working for the German controlled Continental Film Studios. Aurenche is a writer with a complicated love life who injects his scripts with subversive messages, while assistant director Devaivre uses his position as a cover for his increasingly hazardous activities with the Resistance. The film vividly recreates the day-to-day danger, fear and uncertainty of wartime France.

Paris, March 1942, and the victorious German occupying power demands that France pay a colossal financial contribution, 400 million francs a day, to the German war effort. Continental Films, a German controlled production company founded in 1940 in Paris by Albert Greven, is a snare similar to the one into which the French nation has already fallen. Should French technicians agree to work for Continental? Is it a hiding place 'in between the wolf's fangs, where it cannot bite you', or is it equivalent to collaborating with the enemy?

Jean Devaivre is an assistant director who joins Continental as the best possible cover for his Resistance activities. He is a man of action, rash, impulsive and daring. Jean Aurenche, a scriptwriter and poet, uses every possible excuse to turn down any offers of work from the Germans. He is watchful, insatiable, curious and torn between his three mistresses. Above all, he is an observer who resists when he takes up his pen and writes. Their professional and personal circles include dozens of other people, some resigned to their country's fate, others who carry on the struggle. There are fighters and collaborators, but in German-occupied France, they all have to combat hunger, cold and petty restrictions simply to survive. The film is dedicated to those who lived through this time.

Writer/director Bertrand Tavernier on the making of the film:
"Were things as black and white as people subsequently made out? Where do you draw the line between collaboration, survival and resistance? No film has ever dealt with these issues. Laissez-Passer is set during the German occupation but it is not a war film. The dramatic tension comes from the energy, rhythm and multiple contradictory sentiments – comedy, tragedy, emotion – that ricochet off each other within a single scene. The story is full of paradoxes. I really wanted to show the significance of each choice. I wanted to show that there were various forms of resistance during those four years."

Father of my Children

Le père de mes enfants
a film by Mia Hansen-Løve

Grégoire Canvel has everything a man could want. A wife he loves, three delightful children and a stimulating job. He's a film producer. Discovering talented filmmakers and developing films that fit his conception of the cinema, free and true to life, is precisely his reason for living, his vocation. It fulfils him and Grégoire devotes almost all his time and energy to his work. He's hyperactive, he never stops, except at weekends, which he spends in the country with his family – gentle interludes, as precious as they are fragile.

Grégoire is an independent film producer who runs a well-respected, Paris based production company, Moon Films. For Grégoire, his work is his life, and while he loves his wife Sylvia and their three daughters Clémence, Valentine and Billie, during the week he is practically a stranger to them. He makes a point of spending each weekend with his family at their country house, but even then separating Grégoire from his cellphone is all but impossible, and Sylvia and the girls are reaching the end of their patience with him and his obsession with work. Though there's no question that Grégoire is devoted to Moon Films, he has kept a secret from Sylvia and his daughters about the state of the company, and it's not until his sudden, desperate act of suicide which forces Sylvia into leadership of the company that they come to understand the real reasons behind his unrelenting schedule.

This stunning and outstanding film explores the consequences of Grégoire's suicide on his family and his collaborators – examining the deep sorrow experienced by his wife and daughters, the feeling of unacceptable loss, and of the resentment against the deceased who abandoned them. It is loosely based on a real story examining the central aspect of family love. Mia Hansen-Løve took her inspiration from two real-life models, Humbert Balsan, a brilliant film producer who took his life at the age of 51 when he realised he would go bankrupt, and Donna Balsan, his wife, who for all her grief, did her utmost to save Ognon Pictures, her husband's company, after his death.

The director explains that the making of the film stems from her encounter with Humbert Balsan, whom she first met in early 2004, a year before his suicide. "He had an exceptional warmth, elegance and aura. His energy, passion for films and sensitivity, which I took to be an invincible inner beauty, are what made me write the movie. Of course, there is also his suicide. The feelings of failure and despair that it reveals are overwhelming, but that doesn't replace the rest. It doesn't become the only truth. I wanted the film to express the paradox of contradictory movements within the same person, the conflict that can occur between light and darkness, strength and vulnerability, the desire to live and the urge to die."

Cría cuervos...

Raise Ravens
a film by Carlos Saura

In haunting memories, a woman relives the disturbing summer of her father's death. Outside her father's bedroom, the child Ana hears him making love to his best friend's wife, then take his last gasp of breath, apparently dying of a heart attack. When, years earlier, her mother died of cancer, Ana blamed her father; now she believes herself responsible for his demise. In this compelling vision of the child's world, past and present blend imperceptibly. Fantasy and reality become one as dead characters take their place beside the living. Through a series of scenes played out in Ana's imagination and flashbacks to happier times before her mother's illness, we come to realise why Ana believes she has the power over the death of others and why she is becoming increasingly fascinated by death and suicide in general.

Late one night Ana, a melancholic and mostly silent eight-year-old girl, descends the stairs of the darkened house. As she approaches her father's bedroom door she hears a gasping sound followed by a woman's sobs. The door is opened and an attractive middle-aged woman rushes from the bedroom whilst hastily dressing. They exchange glances but do not speak and the woman, who is in a state of great distress, leaves by the front door. Ana then enters her father's room to find him lying dead upon his bed. On the dressing table is a near-empty glass of milk which Ana removes and takes to the kitchen where she calmly washes it and places it on the drainer. In the kitchen, she sees her mother, who chides her for being up so late and sends her off to bed.

Blaming her mother's illness and subsequent death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder, which she believes to be a potent poison, in his milk glass as a wilful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman whom she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction at having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived however, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by Ana's two sisters, eleven-year-old Irene and five-year-old Maite; the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair; and the feisty, kindly housekeeper, Rosa.

Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly like her mother, recounts her infancy: "I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown". The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer holidays. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, and even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the housekeeper, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.

Ana's mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder; her guinea pig's death; and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother the opportunity of dying, and thus a release from loneliness, by providing her with a spoonful of her poison – an offer that is refused. The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted as being nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her philandering father: "The only thing I remember perfectly is that then, my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighed on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness".

Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the house and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been excluded from their world up to this point. A new school year begins and with it the hope, if not the promise, of new possibilities overturning and replacing the oppressive ways of the past.

Seen also as a metaphor of recent Spanish political history, the story captures the loneliness and inner-world perceptions of a young girl as she and her family live through the final years of Spain's Franco regime, with the hope of a new era about to dawn. A darkly haunting, yet beautiful portrayal of the powerlessness often felt in childhood when the significance of external events and the choices made by adults cannot be fully comprehended.

The Beekeeper

O melissokomos
a film by Theo Angelopoulos

Spyros is a schoolmaster of late middle-age who, like his father before him, is also a beekeeper. Disenchanted and unfulfilled by his life, Spyros takes leave of his wife and grown children to embark on a solitary journey in search of the emerging springtime flowers for his cherished beehives. Moving from village to village, he encounters a young girl hitchhiker who awakens in him feelings that start to become an obsession.

After the wedding of his daughter, Spyros retires as a schoolmaster and leaves his wife and home. He embarks on his annual journey with his bees to follow the flowers, to get honey from different areas. As he begins his journey with several other beekeepers, Spyros finds a young girl, abandoned and with no roots, sitting in his truck. He reluctantly gives her a lift and drops her at main road from where she can hitchhike, but seeing the difficulty she is having getting a lift, he agrees to take her back. The girl is willing to go wherever his journey may take her. She makes some advances which he immediately rejects, yet it is clear that he is ambivalent about her.

During his journey, Spyros meets with and pays his respects to the people who have meant something to him in his life – his ex-wife, an old friend, and his daughter. Each time he mysteriously truncates his visit, and the enigma of what lies unsaid deepens after he encounters the hitchhiker again. Both have lost their perspective of the future – he is living in nostalgic reminiscence of the past, while the young girl's life is one of instant gratification, and she seems to be aware of neither past nor future. They meet and part several times in different places, but as they continue to encounter one another, Spyros' resistance to the girl lessens and he becomes quietly obsessed.

An extraordinary and beautifully photographed tale of self-discovery, The Beekeeper is a poetic and moving film about a man's search for existential meaning in his life, and his final struggle to find release from the spectre of the past.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat
a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave – the birthplace of his first life.

Writer/director Weerasethakul on the making of the film:
"I believe in the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals, and ghosts. Uncle Boonmee's story shows the relationship between man and animal and at the same time destroys the line dividing them. When the events are represented through cinema, they become shared memories of the crew, the cast, and the public. A new layer of (simulated) memory is augmented in the audience's experience. In this regard, filmmaking is not unlike creating synthetic past lives. I am interested in exploring the innards of this time machine. There might be some mysterious forces waiting to be revealed just as certain things that used to be called black magic have been shown to be scientific facts. For me, filmmaking remains a source all of whose energy we haven't properly utilised. In the same way that we have not thoroughly explained the inner workings of the mind."

The film compliments Weerasethakul's Primitive project, which deals with ideas of extinction and the recollection of past lives. "Facing the jungle, the hills and vales, my past lives as an animal and other beings rise up before me. The film reinforces a special association between cinema and reincarnation. Cinema is man's way to create alternate universes, other lives."

Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat won the Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes 2010.

Treeless Mountain

A film by So Yong Kim

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, seven-year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are taken to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother's promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimatise to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother's homecoming. But when the piggy bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children.

Jin and Bin live in a cramped apartment in Seoul with their single mother. Though their lives are on the edge of disaster, both girls remain completely oblivious to the threats of the outside world. One morning, quite unexpectedly, their mother packs up all their belongings and sends the girls to live with their alcoholic Big Aunt – their absent father's sister, a woman they do not know. Suddenly thrust into a hostile and unfamiliar environment, the sisters are given a piggy bank and told that every time they obey their aunt they will get a coin to go in it, and when the piggy bank is full, their mother will return.

Wrestling with feelings of abandonment despite the fact that she's not mature enough to understand why their mother has left or what may become of her and Bin in the future, Jin is forced to accept an imposed responsibility where there is no guidance or security offered by adults. Left to their own devices and imaginations the girls discover a way to fill the piggy bank, and in the belief that this will bring the return of their mother, they wait on top of their little hill without trees for the arrival of her bus. But when their mother does not return, the girls are sent by their aunt to the country to live with their grandparents on a farm. It is here, as a result of their grandmother's care and interest in them, so desperately needed, that the two girls learn valuable lessons about family bonds.

A beautiful, meditative and thought-provoking film in which So Yong Kim draws outstanding performances of naturalism from her two young actresses. The camera staying close to the girls' faces, allows us to see through their eyes, with their understanding of the world. An unsentimental and delicately observed portrayal of the quiet resilience of children.

The Consequences of Love

Le conseguenze dell'amore
a film by Paolo Sorrentino

Titta di Girolamo is a 50-year-old loner from southern Italy who has lived for eight years in an anonymous Swiss hotel. He spends his days in the lobby of the hotel, impassively observing the guests and staff with cool detachment. He seems to be a man without identity and with little to do. A nullifying routine, he is constantly waiting for something to happen, but what is Titta's dark secret? And what is the story of the mysterious suitcases delivered to his door? He once lost money owned by the Mafia on the stock market and has been punished in a gruesome way – he is to deliver the Mafia's money to the bank once a week and is allowed no life for himself.

Elegantly dressed, he sits each day in the hotel lobby, smoking cigarettes with impeccable poise. He observes the hotel guests and especially the beautiful bartender, Sofia, but never acknowledges her attempts to be friendly. At night, he plays cards with the former hotel owners who lost the hotel to gambling, before he gets ready for another night without sleep. His detachment from the world is complete, until he begins to communicate with Sofia. At this point his neatly organised life turns upside down and the terrible truth about Titta's concealed world begins to unravel.

An unusual, gripping and tightly plotted psychological thriller – the personal journey of a middle-aged man eternally trapped in an enforced existence. With masterly restrained performances, the unfolding story is stylishly executed as the characters' inner selves are gradually revealed to us. A wonderfully slow-paced film with very sophisticated and innovative cinematography, elegant editing, and a highly atmospheric use of music.

Dolls

A film by Takeshi Kitano

Three contemporary, interwoven stories inspired by the everlasting emotions expressed in Bunraku theatre, the Japanese traditional art of stage puppetry, and the works of the 17th century Japanese dramatist Monzaemon Chikamatsu. Three visually stunning and deeply touching stories of undying love in which the 'human puppets' play out a story conceived by the Bunraku dolls. The film begins during their working hours, their performance. And after their day's work is done, they rest alone and start telling stories, manipulating the humans who become the 'living dolls', pulled by the strings of fate. Three tales of love bound to one another with a piece of red cord.

Matsumoto and Sawako were once a happy couple who seemed destined for marriage. But the age-old pressures of meddling parents and success force the young man to make a tragic choice. He is selected by the president of his company to marry his daughter, a match that will ensure him a bright future. During the wedding ceremony he is told by a friend that Sawako, his true love, has attempted suicide, surviving with brain damage, and Matsumoto leaves his wedding to take Sawako from the hospital. She now wanders the countryside in a mindless daze, bound safely to Matsumoto by a long red cord. On a journey that will cover the four seasons passing from cherry blossoms and summer beaches, to autumn foliage and winter snows, their love becomes stronger and more enduring. To curious eyes, they roam aimlessly. But Matsumoto and Sawako are on a journey in search of something they have lost.

Hiro is an ageing yakuza boss in constant fear of assassination. Although surrounded by respect and affluence, Hiro is alone and his health is failing. Thirty years ago, he was a poor factory worker with a loving girlfriend who brought him lunch in the park. But he abandoned her to search for his dreams of making it big. Throughout the years that have passed she has returned every week in the hope of finding him again. Now, thirty years later, Hiro is drawn back to the park where they used to meet.

Haruna Yamaguchi spends a lot of time on an isolated beach, looking at the sea. Her beautiful face is half-covered in bandages. Not long before the car accident, Haruna was a successful pop star who lived alone in a glamorous world of TV shows and autograph sessions. Millions adored her, longed to be close to her. Now Haruna refuses to be seen again in public. But Nukui, who is probably her most devoted fan and wants so desperately to be with her, finds a way to make Haruna agree to see him in order that he can prove his undying love for her.

Chikamatsu's works are distinct for adding human elements to the theme of the conflict between social pressure and personal desire. His dramas often revolve around the tragedy that can arise when one blindy chooses the importance of loyalty (to one's feudal lord, family, etc) over personal feelings. A great many of Chikamatsu's plays are about shinju, or love suicides. 'Making a choice' means that you have two or more options to choose from. But all the protagonists in these stories are possessed with their own selfish idea of which direction they should take and they act accordingly. They aren't really making choices because they can't see the other options. None of the events in the stories would have happened if the characters were well-balanced enough to make real 'choices'.

A stunning and emotional meditation on love, commitment, conscience, and the consequences of choice. Expressed through visual rhyme and startling adjustments of perspective which draw us deep into the characters' inner worlds, the three stories explore themes of regret, sorrow, loss and sacrifice and the idea that one's destiny is inescapable.

Esma's Secret

Grbavica
a film by Jasmila Žbanić

A moving story about life in contemporary Sarajevo and of a mother's struggle to provide for her rebellious teenage daughter in the wake of the civil war. Esma wants to grant her daughter Sara's wish to participate in a school trip. A certificate proving her father is a war martyr would allow her a discount. But Esma continues to avoid Sara's requests for the certificate. She would rather find a way to pay full price for the trip. She believes not telling the truth about Sara's father is a way to protect both her and her daughter.

Single mother Esma lives with her twelve-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo's Grbavica neighbourhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Unable to make ends meet with the meagre government aid she receives, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Working all night is difficult for Esma physically and it also forces her to reluctantly spend less time with her daughter. Still haunted by violent events in her past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women's Centre. In addition to relying on her best friend Sabina, Esma also finds a kindred spirit in Pelda, a compassionate male co-worker from the nightclub.

Feisty tomboy Sara begins to put soccer aside as she develops a close friendship with classmate Samir. The two sensitive young teenagers feel a strong bond because both lost their fathers in the war. But Samir is surprised to hear Sara doesn't know the details of her father's noble death. Sara's father becomes an issue when she requires the certificate proving he died a shaheed, a war martyr, so that she can receive a discount for an upcoming school trip. Esma claims acquiring the certificate is difficult since his body has yet to be found. Meanwhile, Esma searches desperately to borrow money to pay for Sara's trip.

Confused, Sara becomes violently upset when some classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs' children. Realising her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth. Esma breaks down and brutally explains how the girl was conceived through rape in a POW camp. As painful as their confrontation is, it is Esma's first real step towards overcoming her deep trauma. Despite Sara's hurt, there is still an opening for a renewed relationship between mother and daughter.

Focusing upon the female experience of post-conflict 'ordinary' life, writer/director Jasmila Žbanić describes her award-winning debut feature as being primarily a story about love. About love that is not pure, because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair. It's also about victims who, though they did not commit any crime, are still not entirely innocent in relation to future generations. Grbavica is also about truth, a cosmic power necessary to progress, and very much needed by society in Bosnia and Herzegovina who must strive to reach maturity.

A universal tale of pain and struggle, Grbavica is a heartbreaking story about the violence against women in the recent Balkan War. It explores in a very genuine and delicate way how these victims of war crimes will still be living in a war of their own emotions for the rest of their lives. But it is also a story about hope, as they attempt to pick up the pieces of their shattered psyches and somehow move on with their lives.

Delta

A film by Kornél Mundruczó

After making his fortune in the city, Mihail, a quiet and gentle young man returns after an absence of many years to his isolated Romanian village in the Danube delta. It is a labyrinth of waterways, small islands and over-grown vegetation, where the villagers are cut off from the outside world. He is greeted by a stepfather he has never met before, as well as his mother and adult sister, Fauna. Treated with suspicion by his stepfather and considered by the community to be an outsider who does not belong, his presence is unwelcome in the village. However, for Mihail this is not an issue since he has plans to create a new life alone in the marshes independent of them all. But despite his intentions, Mihail's return will in time fracture the family.

Fauna, a frail, slight and timid young woman decides to abandon her life with her mother and stepfather who run the village bar, to join Mihail in the middle of the marsh. She follows him to their deceased father's abandoned property to help him in the construction of a house on stilts with a long pier over the water. As their lives become increasingly close and intimate, they begin to experience a more deep-seated and harmonious relationship with the natural world around them and a tender love and affection for each other. But their relationship also elicits the disapproval of their family and eventually of the community too, leading to tragic consequences and to a heartbreaking conclusion.

This sensitive, insightful and intensely beautiful film looks at human nature and the dilemma of following one's heart or obeying social conventions. With its outstanding cinematography, it reflects also on man's need to re-bond with his natural habitat. Exploring the phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction, whereby siblings who live apart until they meet in adulthood can feel an overwhelming sexual attraction for one another, the story meditates on the consequences of a fraternal love that drifts into seemingly unacceptable territory.

The White Ribbon

Das weiße Band
a film by Michael Haneke

On the eve of World War I, the quiet order of a small protestant village in northern Germany is disturbed by a series of mysterious and inexplicable incidents. To the mounting concern of the villagers, the events persist, becoming increasingly sinister and assuming the characteristics of a perverse punishment ritual. But who is responsible? The story follows the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families – the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, and the tenant farmers of the estate.

The doctor is severely injured when his horse is brought down by a wire placed at knee height. A farmer's wife dies after falling through rotten floorboards. A window is opened to expose a newborn baby to the intense cold of the winter. A field of cabbages on the baron's land are destroyed with a scythe. One of the baron's sons disappears and is later found with his feet and hands bound, having been lashed with a whip. A barn belonging to the manor is set on fire. A farmer hangs himself. A midwife's handicapped child is found tied to a tree in a forest, seriously beaten, with a threatening message on his chest speaking of divine punishment.

Since the beginning of these events, the strict and severe pastor had tied a white ribbon to the arm of his two eldest children, his daughter Klara and son Martin, to remind them of their duty to purity. As the violent and disturbing events begin to escalate, the schoolteacher observes, investigates and little by little discovers the incredible truth.

This brilliant, chilling masterpiece penetrates the surface of an outwardly peaceful and puritanical society to reveal the malevolence and violence beneath – and the terrible consequences they threaten to unleash. Exploring themes of guilt, denial and violence, this haunting and provocative feature was awarded the Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes 2009.

Innocence

A film by Lucile Hadžihalilović

At the heart of a densely wooded forest lies a mysterious girls' boarding school. A subterranean rumbling resonates in the heart of the forest. Hidden by foliage, a metal grate reveals underground passageways, which lead to the cellars of five houses scattered throughout a great park. The park is cut off from the outside world by a huge wall with no door. Within one of the houses, a group of youngsters aged between seven and twelve gather round a small coffin, from which emerges a new pupil, six-year-old Iris. Led by the eldest girl, Bianca, Iris is introduced to this strange yet enchanting world of lamp-lit forest paths and eerie underground passageways, where there are no adults save for several elderly servants and two melancholy young teachers, Mlle Edith and Mlle Eva. But this haven is one from which the girls are forbidden to leave, and those that do are never heard from again.

A dark, yet beautiful fable that contrasts the atmosphere of dread and uncertainty with the light of youthful purity. Captivating in its mystery, the further the story progresses without giving any answers, the more the anxiety builds. It is set in a timeless present evocative of the 1960s, and is not, strictly speaking, a fantasy film, but simply a child's eye vision of real life, experienced through its three main characters – Iris, the youngest girl, who arrives at the school; Alice, who has already spent several years there and rebels; and Bianca, who is at the end of the school cycle and represents a young girl shaped by it.

This strikingly unique debut feature explores themes of metamorphosis, maturity, understanding, friendship and loss, as the young girls prepare for their ascent into womanhood. Haunting and bizarre, filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović imbues Innocence with a fairytale-like sense of menace and images of surreal beauty, creating a mesmerising and timeless evocation of childhood.

Summer Hours

L'heure d'été
a film by Olivier Assayas

The divergent paths of three adult siblings collide when their mother, heiress to her uncle's exceptional 19th century art collection, dies suddenly. Left to come to terms with themselves and their differences, Adrienne a successful New York designer, Frédéric an economist and university professor in Paris, and Jérémie a dynamic businessman in China, confront the end of childhood, their shared memories, background and unique visions of the future.

Hélène Berthier, the niece of a famous painter, has devoted her life to the preservation of her uncle's legacy. Her house contains a vast collection of his paintings and sketches, antique furniture and fine art objects including several works by Carot. Hélène's family have gathered to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday and she has decided it is now time to discuss their inheritance after she dies. Whilst Frédéric, her eldest, expects that the family will want to preserve the house and its collection intact, Hélène is under no such illusion. For her it symbolises the most important things in her life – the love she has for her deceased uncle, her memories, her secrets – and she knows that when she dies this very personal significance cannot be preserved.

After Hélène's death her three children return again to the house and following the funeral have to confront the issue of her estate. The sentimental Frédéric, the only sibling still living in France, proposes that he, with his wife Lisa, oversees the preservation of the treasured family heirlooms. Jérémie however explains that his business and family commitments are likely to keep him and his wife Angela in Asia for the foreseeable future. Whilst they would derive no benefit from keeping the house, his own financial share of the inheritance has now become vital to his future. The equally pragmatic Adrienne then announces that she and her partner James are about to marry and that with her life centred entirely in the United States, she too feels no desire to retain the family home in France.

Adrienne no longer thinks in terms of geographical borders and her brother Jérémie is now a part of the modern global economy, the very economy that Frédéric opposes and does not believe in. Frédéric's wish to protect the family's possessions is based entirely upon their symbolic and sentimental value to him, whereas for Adrienne and Jérémie the objects of the past, however beautiful, can hold no personal significance. Clearly shocked and disappointed, Frédéric has to come to terms with this inevitability, completely unforeseen by him despite Hélène's anticipation of, and preparations for, the disposition of her assets. Torn between issues of heritage and modernity, Hélène's children must now question the value of preserving their cultural roots in a world of globalisation, and abandon the remaining material links between each other and their childhood.

An insightful, heartfelt and thought-provoking drama examining the themes of generational change and cultural identity. The film is beautifully photographed and features some extraordinary works of art from the collections of Musée de Louvre and Musée d'Orsay.

A Winter's Tale

Conte d'hiver
a film by Éric Rohmer

On holiday in Bretagne, Parisian hairdresser Félicie has an idyllic romance which results in the birth of her daughter, Elise. Through a mix-up over her address just as he is leaving for the United States, she loses touch with Elise's father, Charles, and becomes obsessed with the lost love of her life. Finding it impossible to settle with another man, she holds onto the dream that Charles may one day return. Five years later we find Félicie attracted to, but not in love with, two different men each of whom she leaves for the other. She divides her time between the handsome and devoted Loïc, and the adoring and dependable Maxence. Offering her different things, she is unable to choose between them, aware that she is still in love with the father of her child.

Maxence, her boss, is moving from Paris to Nevers and wants Félicie to come with him. She loves being with him but is not madly in love with him. After first saying no, she then agrees and leaves Loïc. Once there however, Félicie has another change of heart following an epiphany about her love for Charles during a visit to a cathedral. She returns to her mother in Paris and goes to see Loïc again.

Loïc is a librarian and intellectual who loves to engage her in deeply spiritual conversation about religion, reincarnation and the nature of the soul. Whilst he is very Catholic in his belief and outlook, Félicie is far more of a free spirit. After her return to Paris, during a visit to the theatre with Loïc to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, she realises that she too must "awake her faith" and she experiences the purity of her lost love in contrast to the seemingly mundane choices she has been facing in her daily life. By opening herself to the possibility, the improbable might just happen, but in the most unexpected way.

A treatise on the nature of faith, intuition and love that never dies, this the second of Éric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons, is a charming and superbly acted love story with the compelling quality of a fairytale.

Katalin Varga

A film by Peter Strickland

Banished by her husband and her village, Katalin Varga is left with no other choice than to set out on a quest to find the real father of her son, Orbán. Taking the boy with her, Katalin travels through the Carpathians where she decides to reopen a sinister chapter from her past and take revenge. The hunt leads her to a place, she prayed eleven years prior, she would never set foot in again.

For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Orbán serves as a living reminder. When her village discovers her secret, Katalin's husband Zsigmond rejects her. Taking Orbán with her, on the pretext of visiting his ailing grandmother, she sets out with horse-drawn wagon on a journey through the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian mountains of Transylvania to seek revenge on the perpetrators whom she has not seen since the assault.

After their arrival in the village, Katalin encounters Gergely, one of the men involved in the crime, and luring him into a compromising situation, she explodes into a violent rage in which she murders him. Katalin next sets out to find Antal Borlan, the rapist, to mete out similar punishment, but before she can confront him Antal befriends Orbán, and Katalin is taken aback when she realises the man who violated her has not only charmed her son, but also has a wife, Etelka, and others who love him and depend on him.

In a mesmerising sequence when Katalin joins Antal and Etelka in their rowing boat on a lake, she tells them the awful story of the rape. We see Antal's nervous reactions as Katalin describes in great detail both the events and the resulting aftermath of his actions, without identifying him by name. At a certain point in her story her language unexpectedly changes into that of the folk-tale, with an eerie and unnerving effect.

Her choices have far reaching consequences for the people she meets and those she seeks out, but it is those who are innocent and unknowing who suffer the greatest impact from her terrible revenge and she is forced to consider that morality might not be as black and white as she had imagined. As hunter becomes hunted and Katalin's mission becomes ever more precarious, the atmosphere and tension gradually heighten until we realise that Katalin's journey is likely to be strictly one-way, for such is the inexorability of tragedy.

This mysterious, unusual and very beautiful film combines the elements of psychological thriller with social comment on punishment and justice. Set in the present day, yet as timeless and eternal as the mountains, forests and surrounding Transylvanian landscape, Katalin Varga is a captivating story, intricately woven around very traditional themes of revenge and redemption.

The Turin Horse

A Torinói ló
a film by Béla Tarr

Inspired by the story of 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche protecting a horse from abuse, the film details the lives of the coachman, his daughter, and the horse. In Turin on 3 January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of 6 Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom-cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his prompting, the horse refuses to move and at this the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. As Nietzsche approaches this scene, he suddenly jumps towards the cab and, bursting into tears, throws his arms around the horse's neck. Nietzsche is then taken home where he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan. He spends the remaining ten years of his life silent and demented, under the care of his mother and sisters.

Ohlsdorfer, the carter, and his daughter live out their lives on their farmstead. They subsist on hard work, their only source of income being the horse and cart. The father takes on carting jobs, his daughter takes care of the household. It's a very meagre life and infinitely monotonous. Their repeating gestures and the changes in seasons and times of day dictate the rhythm and routine which is cruelly inflicted on them. Their horse, now old and in very poor condition, is no longer able to carry out its tasks. Pulling the loaded cart becomes more and more difficult. However, it tries to obey the words of command but even the whip can't force it to achieve beyond its strength.

All that the horse wants now is peace and an untroubled death. The dying of the horse shapes the story of the film which is framed by the gale sweeping all before it, whose function is to bring true order to the world, at the same time giving the final tribute of respect to innocence and defencelessness. The film speaks about death, and the deep pain that comes with it, felt by all of us as a universal law.

Announced as Béla Tarr's last film, The Turin Horse made its world premiere in competition at Berlin Film Festival 2011 where it was awarded the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear.

It's Winter

Zemestan
a film by Rafi Pitts based on the story Safar by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi.

Mokhtar has just lost his job, the store where he works having been forced to close. His chances of finding employment elsewhere are remote, so feeling he has no other option he decides to search for work abroad. Amid a bleak and bitter Iranian winter, his wife Khatoun and their young daughter accompany him to the railway station where he boards the train, and hoping for greater opportunities and better times, he leaves his family behind in Tehran. Meanwhile Khatoun must somehow support herself, her child and her ageing mother on the meagre wage she receives for working long hours in the clothing factory. She is also forced to sell household belongings and furniture in order to survive. Months pass and Mokhtar's family hear no word from him. One day the police come to the house with news of his death.

A stranger, Marhab, arrives in town in search of work. He is a mechanic, specialising in crane repairs, and is confident that his skills will enable him to secure employment. But when he is repeatedly told there is no work for him he is forced to clean the windscreens of trucks for small change. Sleeping at a café he meets Ali Reza, also a mechanic, who gets him a job at the truck repair yard where he works. When walking along the railway track one day Marhab encounters the beautiful Khatoun as she returns home from work. He hears that she no longer has a husband and as he begins to fall in love with her, he follows her on her journeys across town and then sitting on the railway track observes her at home, awaiting his opportunity. Eventually she confronts him and asks him directly why he is following her. During a very emotional exchange Marhab, shocked and deeply embarrassed, attempts to express his feelings for the woman he loves. Time passes, Marhab wins Khatoun's trust and affection and they marry.

But Marhab is essentially a drifter, needing change in his life and is always searching for something new. He is willing to work hard for a decent wage but also wants a life for himself outside of work. He becomes indifferent to the job he has, arguing with the boss over time taken off and the fact that he has worked for several months but has yet to be paid. The boss is unwilling to accept his attitude to work and eventually fires him. Marhab, now unemployed with little hope of finding work but now shouldering the responsibility of a family, contemplates leaving Tehran to search for work abroad.

Outside on the railway track Mokhtar sits in the darkness watching the house. He has returned alive but broken, penniless and now an amputee on crutches. He sees that there is no longer a place for him with Khatoun and his daughter, life has moved on during his long absence and he does not belong here. But as Mokhtar sits watching the house, Marhab is preparing to leave his home and family and we see that their story has now turned full circle.

Marhab returns to the café once more where in conversation with the proprietor he speaks of the troubles and frustrations in his life. As he does so a man on crutches enters and Marhab is told in some detail of the misfortunes of this individual. The following day, as Marhab stands at the railway station awaiting his train amid a bitter winter blizzard, the destinies of both these men, who in many ways can be seen as the same person, are concluded.

The struggle to survive of a generation torn between wanting to leave its country yet bound by blood to home. This visually very beautiful and emotionally charged film was inspired by Dowlatabadi's book The Trip but is also influenced by the poem Winter by Mehdi Akhavan Saless. The lines of this poem, well-known in Iran, depict the governing power and the cold attitudes of winter and are used at the beginning and end to frame the film, giving form to feelings and sentiments that are otherwise oblique and intangible. Through its characters the film describes the harsh life in which we struggle under pressure, merely to survive day-to-day and it highlights the plight and fate universally, not just in Iran, of the working classes. It is their story.

Damnation

Kárhozat
a film by Béla Tarr

In a small Hungarian town lives Karrer, a listless and brooding man who has almost completely withdrawn from the world, but for an obsession with a singer in the bar he frequents. The film opens on to a view of a desolate, industrialised landscape. Overhead, giant buckets suspended from an aerial cableway journey endlessly back and forth, their cyclic movement and repetitive, mechanical sound appear to be the only signs of human activity. The camera draws slowly back revealing Karrer sitting at his window, motionless and watching. A solitary man whose life is almost completely eroded by hopelessness except for his love and desire for a beautiful, haunting singer at the Titanik Bar, a nightclub in this small, drab coal-mining town. The girl is doing her best to end their relationship, and her husband warns him to stay away from his wife. But Karrer's very existence clings to the hope that she will leave her husband for him, and yet he seems incapable of doing anything to make this, or anything else in his life, happen.

Karrer is then offered a smuggling job by Willarsky, the shady owner of a local bar, but he decides instead to offer it to Sebestyén, the girl's husband, who has built up a substantial debt and is in danger of being imprisoned for it. Sebestyén's acceptance means that Karrer and the girl can spend a few days alone together. The girl too is desperate for change in her life and wants to leave for the city to become a famous singer. Certainly she doesn't see Karrer's advances as an answer to her dreams, but eventually she agrees to sleep with him during the husband's absence. A bitter Karrer then decides he will turn in to the authorities her husband when he returns from his smuggling job, leaving her alone and thus making him now the logical option. By the end of the story, the lives of the characters will be as broken and desolate as the crumbling town in which they live. Yet, as they wander aimlessly about in a purgatory from which there is no escape, we see that their hopelessness only really comes from inside the individual.

The slowly gliding camera seems almost to have an agenda of its own, whilst the gritty, high contrast, deep-shadows noir imagery adds to the growing sensation of unease. This, the first film in which Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr fully realised his mesmerising and apocalyptic world view is an immaculately photographed and composed study of eternal conflict, the centuries-old struggle between barbarism and civilisation. It was his first collaboration with novelist and fellow countryman László Krasznahorkai and the second film on which he worked with Hungarian musician and composer Mihály Víg.

Werckmeister Harmonies

Werckmeister harmóniák
a film by Béla Tarr adapted from the novel The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai.

The population of a desolate provincial town on the Hungarian plain await the arrival of a circus that features the stuffed carcass of a whale and a mysterious Prince. Its appearance disturbs the order of the populace, unleashing a torrent of violence and beauty.

We first meet János Valuska in a bar at closing time where he choreographs three of the inebriated patrons in a ballet of the earth's orbit of the sun and the moon's orbit of the earth. At a precise point he freezes his actors to describe a total eclipse of the sun. How the world and all its creatures pause in momentary fear of the sudden cold darkness until the warmth of the sun again floods the earth. He demonstrates a disturbing but temporary dark moment that emerges from a natural order. In this scene, surprisingly profound, amusing and beautiful all at the same time, we gain a first insight into the personality of this gentle, caring and innocent character with the childlike sense of wonder.

Next we follow János as he walks through the dark streets to the house of György Eszter, a distinguished musicologist and intellectual, now elderly and infirm, whom János helps and looks after on a daily basis. György is determined to prove that the order imposed on sound by the Werckmeister Harmonies, a disruption of the natural order to broaden the musical range, is false and that only the purer natural scale is truth – a recurrent theme throughout the story, highlighting the contrast and values between a natural order and an imposed man-made order.

After helping Uncle Gyuri into bed, János then sets off to work at the sorting office. On his way there he watches the arrival into town of a tractor pulling an enormous corrugated shed inside of which is a stuffed whale, the world's largest, and the poster advertising this attraction says that a Prince accompanies the whale. But apprehension and fear are spreading through the town and already the social order is beginning to break down. With the onset of winter there is a shortage of coal; there are growing mountains of frozen rubbish everywhere; entire families mysteriously disappear. Hundreds of strangers are said to have arrived on the train because of the whale and the Prince – a mutant whose godless speeches incite hatred, violence and disharmony. Already, looting has taken place and people are now afraid to leave their homes.

At daybreak János makes his way to the market square where the circus trailer containing the whale is parked. A large crowd of men, sinister and menacing in their silence, have already gathered there, standing around the square in small groups, waiting for the appearance of the Prince. Weary and hungry, János finally returns home when Tünde Eszter arrives, threatening to move back in with György, her estranged husband, if János does not convince him to use his influence to help her start her 'clean town movement'. As the brooding threat of public disorder increases, the gathered mob mobilise and embark on a night of rioting, arson and violence, with a savage attack on the hospital resulting in the arrival of the military with tanks to restore order. János is told that it is no longer safe for him to remain in the town and he attempts his escape from the chaos which now surrounds him.

With this surreal and quite extraordinary feature, Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr finally gained international recognition as one of the most distinctive and visionary of contemporary filmmakers. Although many have seen this film as an allegory for the failure of East European Communism, for the evolution and propagation of corrupted "pure" ideas that are based on flawed premises, the director maintains that he has never made a political film. This work is much more a commentary on human nature and society's following a false path in an attempt to achieve harmony, enlightenment and existential purpose. A hypnotic, challenging and utterly compelling masterpiece also featuring a beautiful score by composer Mihály Víg.