Ever since writer/director Asghar Farhadi became the first Iranian filmmaker to win a Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2011 for his stunning movie A Separation, he has continued to helm compelling dramas of domestic discord that show the uneasiness of women’s roles in contemporary Iranian society. The Salesman starts very dramatically with the impending collapse … Continue reading
Val is a much put-upon live-in maid to a lazy and self-absorbed wealthy family in Sao Paulo. She’s the housekeeper, cleaner, cook, gardener and even pool boy, yet she’s practically invisible to her employers Barbara and Carlos until they want something. Strangely enough she accepts their rather callous and off-hand treatment mainly because being there … Continue reading
Indian filmmaker Ritesh Batra is following up his 2013 breakout hit The Lunchbox with his sophomore feature and his first in English with an adaption of Julian Barnes’s Booker award winning novel The Sense of an Ending. This is the quintessential British tale of a retired middle-class man who settled for a mundane life rather than … Continue reading
For his seventh feature film acclaimed Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov has adapted a stage play by the German writer Marius von Mayenburg that takes a hefty swipe at religious fanaticism with this tale of Veniamin (Pyotr Skvortsov) a rebellious newly-devout teenager who is literally determined to make life hell for everyone else who he thinks are sinners. … Continue reading
If you have never been in an Orthodox Synagogue before than you may not even be aware that the sexes do not mix and that women must worship from an upstairs balcony overlooking the (holier?) men. In this particular case the balcony actually collapses in the middle of a Bar Mitzvah in this small run … Continue reading