SPECIAL FEATURE: Trailer: Cinema Release: How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

English-language release.

Check out the trailer below for How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?, which is released in cinemas on 28th January 2011.

More information on this film can be found by clicking here.

REVIEW: Cinema Release: The Portuguese Nun

Film: The Portuguese Nun
Release date: 21st January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 127 mins
Director: Eugène Green
Starring: Leonor Baldaque, Francisco Mozos, Diogo Dória, Ana Moreira, Eugène Green
Genre: Drama
Studio: ICA
Format: Cinema
Country: Portugal/France

The Portuguese Nun pursues the emotional journey of Julie de Hauranne, a French actress shooting a Portuguese film in Lisbon. Beginning as a character with unsteady feet, Julie is the subject of a progressive epiphany as she realises that she has the capacity to embrace life. Despite having three previous feature films, this is director Eugene Green’s first to be distributed in the UK – and he does not disappoint. Instead, he smothers viewers with his peculiar approach to cinema, playing with unconventionality and casting actors who have a blinding capacity to project emotion through their facial expression. It is with such experimentation that the film basks in an unconcealed pretention, allowing itself to exhibit a sardonic atmosphere rather than a solemn one.

The Portuguese Nun follows Julie around a picturesque Lisbon setting as she frivolously befriends anyone she meets, unfalteringly jumping into romantic exchanges and an assortment of acquaintances. We meet a 6-year-old orphan named Vasco, a suicidal local, the supposed reincarnation of dead Portuguese king Dom Sebastião, a co-star in search of a brief love affair, and a moustached disco-dancing film director. Julie is French, but her Portuguese mother has given her the gift of language necessary for fully experiencing her brief encounter with the country’s capital.

Julie is filming a bizarre movie based on a 17th century text about a Portuguese nun who falls in love with a French sailor, starring just two actors – Julie as the nun, and Martin as the sailor. The slack filming schedule facilitates her various meetings, starting with a momentary romance between Julie and Henrique. It is intentionally stiff and deliberate; their kiss is choreographed by procedure rather than passion. Julie soon becomes intrigued by a real local nun who appears to be forever knelt in front of the altar, and, in a bold directorial move, Julie and the nun spend almost fifteen minutes discussing spiritual versus secular love, religious philosophy and the presence of God.

The film within a film becomes almost a mirror image of the narrative: Eugene Green embellishes his talents at writing and directing by also playing the part of the film’s director Dennis Verde; Julie’s role as a nun is paralleled by the presence of the authentic nun; Julie and Martin’s on-screen love scene is later re-enacted in her hotel bedroom. And then suddenly Julie is surpassing this fabricated bubble of fiction as she undergoes a long-awaited revelation, narrated over a view of calm, open sea: “my passion increases with each moment…”


The Portuguese Nun opens before the soundtrack is introduced, painting an untainted image of Lisbon’s architectural personality before romanticising the view with the sound of mournful fado guitars. The same track is later allowed within the walls of the film’s narrative in a full-length performance of ‘Esquina de Rua’ by Camané. Julie watches, mesmerised by its haunting melancholy, while the camera plays upon the intensity of emotion projected between the music and the characters. It lingers on a section of grey wall, there are leaves dancing in a circle of wind in the background - it is an early indication of the director’s abstract style.

The film is constantly silhouetted by its dedication to the awareness of acting. Dialogue is intentionally rigid and movements are conscious - everybody knows that this is a staged work of fiction. And so Green’s creative choices are in fact brilliant, displaying his refreshingly eccentric skill of highlighting everything which would normally remain hidden in conventional filmmaking. Green liberates the principles of cinematography with his idiosyncratic techniques: focusing on characters’ feet rather than their heads; using as much silence between characters as there is speech; allowing the shot to linger on the backdrop, even after all the actors have left the scene; and shooting conversations with the actors speaking directly into the camera, surpassing the boundaries of the screen and reaching into our own world.

Leonor Baldaque is adequately likeable as Julie, but the director’s obviously stylised approach eventually mutates her great performance into something tiresome and simulated. Baldaque’s sparse dialogue is compensated for by her unflinching and vast eyes, which somehow have a consistent ability to communicate everything which the director requires. But while being forced into an unnerving face-to-face intimacy with every character is initially fascinating, its novelty eventually wears off due to its frequent rather than poignant use.

In a comical attempt at reading the minds of many cynical viewers, the opening scene features the hotel concierge declaring:“I never see French films, they’re for intellectuals.” Perhaps Eugene Green is encouraging the world to give abstract French cinema a second chance. Or perhaps he is simply paving the way for the rest of his mocking script. Green himself is subtly hilarious as he plays the part of Denis Verde, laboriously articulating his vocabulary in an attempt to maintain the non-acting which makes the film so intriguingly artificial.


The Portuguese Nun spends over two hours detailing Julie’s short journey of spiritual and social progression, using understated dramatics to belittle the elite world of French cinema whilst still endorsing the idea of obscurity. What it lacks in plot development, it makes up for in quirkiness. Green allows his film to laugh at itself without smiling - there is some humour concealed within his serious French walls. Sadly the static nature of the film hinders it from having an enormous psychological impact, but its visual quality remains a romantic ode to Lisbon. NM

TRAILER: Cinema Release: Men On The Bridge

Check out the trailer below for Men On The Bridge, which is released in cinemas on 28th January 2011.

More information on this film can be found by clicking here.

TRAILER: Cinema Release: Biutiful

Check out the trailer below for Biutiful, which is released in cinemas on 28th January 2011

More information on this film can be found by clicking here.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Cinema Release: How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

This is an English-language release.

The film traces the rise of one of the world’s premier architects, Norman Foster, and his unending quest to improve the quality of life through design.

Portrayed are Foster’s origins and how his dreams and influences inspired the design of emblematic projects, such as the largest building in the world Beijing Airport, the Reichstag, the Hearst Building in New York, and works such as the tallest bridge ever in Millau France.

In the very near future, the majority of mankind will abandon the countryside and live entirely in cities. Foster offers some striking solutions to the problems that this historic event will create.

Film: How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?
Release date: 28th January 2011
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 78 mins
Director: Carlos Carcas & Norberto López Amado
Starring: Norman Foster, Deyan Sudjic
Genre: Documentary/Biography
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: Cinema
Country: UK/Spain/Germany/USA/Switzerland/France/China/Hong Kong

REVIEW: Cinema Release: Men On The Bridge

Film: Men On The Bridge
Release date: 28th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Asli Özge
Starring: Fikret Portakal, Murat Tokgöz, Umut İlker, Cemile İlker
Genre: Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: Cinema
Country: Germany/Turkey/Netherlands

After winning Best Film awards at the Istanbul and Adana festivals, Men On The Bridge has been granted a limited cinema release in the UK. Asli Özge’s first ‘fiction’ feature loosely interweaves the lives of three Istanbul residents – a taxi-driver, a traffic cop and a young guy illegally selling roses – who every day use the bridge that spans the Bosporus.

Cabbie Umut is struggling to make ends meet and satisfy his young wife, whose ambitions for a bigger apartment are way beyond their income and puts a strain on their marriage. Lonesome cop Murat tries to find a girlfriend on the internet. Teenage Fikret searches for a real job, but is continually thwarted by his lack of education and impoverished background.

Blurring the line between fiction and documentary, Özge’s brisk narrative covers a range of issues - unemployment, immigration, poverty, urbanisation, globalisation, sex, religion, tradition, modernisation – as it depicts the lives of three men from the poorer suburbs of the Turkish capital…


Originally conceived as a documentary, Men On The Bridge often plays out as such through its lack of narrative drive, but resembles a full-blown feature thanks to some impressive camerawork from award-winning cinematographer Emre Erkmen. Technically, it’s a very accomplished picture, especially in its editing - Özge demonstrating an intuitive ability to cut or switch narratives at just the right point before her audience grows bored. For a film in which nothing overly dramatic occurs, it’s quite an achievement that our attention rarely wavers. The lack of conventional storyline may alienate some, though that may be par for the course in a film where alienation is a key theme

Istanbul, and specifically the bridge which crosses the Bosporus, famously stands as the gateway between Europe and Asia. While aspects of this inform her picture, Özge is much more interested in the notoriously congested bridge as a symbol of division. Her film presents not only an Istanbul divided socially and politically, but also a nation – indicated by news reports of fighting in the southeast between the Turkish army and a Kurdish separatist group.

Bridges may also symbolise communication, but in Özge’s film, this symbol is again defined negatively. Just as the film occupies a no-man’s land between documentary and movie, the bridge represents a spatial nowhere. It’s a space marked by journeying without arrival, a kind of sustained stasis for the three men amidst the continual passage of the other travellers. For Umut, Murat and Fikret, the bridge goes nowhere. These are characters in the process of being left behind by the promises, economic or otherwise, of modern Istanbul.

All three men are linked by disenchantment within their jobs, as well as by a shared inability to communicate and connect; symptomatic of their sense of apartness, of something missing from their lives. When 24-year old Murat isn’t displaying his immaturity by punctuating his online chats with childish animations, oblivious to the unimpressed reactions on the other end of the videocam, he’s embarking on some of the most toe-curlingly awkward dates since Robert De Niro took Cybill Shepherd to a porn cinema in Taxi Driver. Fikret’s impoverished background and general ignorance leads to his being sacked on the first day of his new restaurant job - he doesn’t get off to the best start in having no idea what cutlery means. Umut and his wife Cemile struggle to communicate meaningfully with each other, their exchanges often descending into sulking and reproachful silences. When they do manage to get across what they want or expect from life, the other seems unable or unwilling to listen. Fitting, then, that Umut is fined for using his mobile phone while driving across the bridge.

Men On The Bridge has one thing in common with a number of recent Turkish films, and especially with Pelin Esmer’s 10 To 11 - transition and a yearning for the Western way of life. The characters strive for a piece of the life advertised by soap operas and Hollywood films. This aspect is immediately signposted in the opening scene where Umut watches Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and there is a further link between that movie’s golden ticket and the recurring motif of lottery tickets in Özge’s film. The Western way of life is represented primarily by images of consumerism and capitalism: the Dolce & Gabbana shopping bags carried by the two women Cemile follows down the street; the gaming consoles and mobile phones in the department store where Fikret and his friend spend the afternoon before they are thrown out as suspected shoplifters; Murat’s credit card debts... They represent a lifestyle which lies beyond their reach. Characters frequently say things like, “Everything depends on money,” or “If you have money, you can do anything.” By far the least likeable character, though, is Umut’s boss and landlord, Bülent; who has ‘made it’, and advises Umut to hit his wife if she complains too much. Umut tells Cemile money is this Muslim hadji’s true god. They both criticise Bülent for worshipping money, even as they secretly envy him.

Within a world marked by constant longing and denial, love and commerce become intertwined. Murat must pay membership fees for all those dating websites, searching for a love which he never finds. “I want the same things you want,” Umut tells his wife, but the distance between what each wants and what each expects means day by day they fall further out of love. Fikret has neither love nor money, and endeavours to find a proper job so he can pay a prostitute to relieve him of his virginity. It reveals how little he has come to expect from life that the prospect of finding a girl he doesn’t have to pay for sex seems as remote as escaping his job selling flowers on the bridge.

Though the film never prioritises one story over another, Umut and Cecile’s narrative has the most impact; mainly because in its examination of a marriage in crisis, it seems to suggest love alone may not be enough. It would be easy to brush off Umut’s attitude as simply depression, but the film encourages us to address the social conditions which have shaped his outlook. That pessimism seems more realistic than his wife’s dreams of a huge flat screen television to place on the wall of an apartment neither can afford. In this, the film’s themes carry universal resonance. Özge seems to identify the false promises of capitalism, the dissatisfaction that rampant consumerism (the ‘aspirational lifestyle’) breeds and constantly feeds back off. Özge never takes sides, though, and her film is more concerned with asking questions than providing answers. Umut seems more resigned to his lot than content, and at least Cemile has some life left in her, and still retains the capacity to dream and hope for better.

The film is performed by non-professional actors, essentially playing themselves (with the exception of Murat, who as a policeman was not allowed to appear in the film). It’s the most obvious example of the film’s blurring between documentary and movie, and it adds an extra authenticity to proceedings. You wonder how close to the bone much of this is for the real people, and to what extent their actual lives resemble those onscreen. A final exchange between Umut and Cemile is especially powerful. Both are clearly descending into a state of depression (if not already there), and the pain is tangible upon their faces and in their body language. This is more than acting, and it can be almost unbearably intimate in places.

The film closes with its only moment of genuine connection. Murat, the archetypal country boy lost in the big city, sits by the shoreline and calls his mother to say he misses her and his little village. Significantly, he does not cross the river via the bridge, instead he takes the ferry. A conclusion which seems to confirm Özge’s position that the modern world may be no place for those with a heart.


It’s debatable whether the world really needs another piece of social realism portraying modern alienation, but it would be a shame if Men On The Bridge slips under the radar. It could do with a little more light to balance out the pessimism, which sometimes threatens to overwhelm, but, for the most part, Özge’s film is an assured, thought-provoking debut. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here. GJK

REVIEW: Cinema Release: Abel

Film: Abel
Release date: 7th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 82 mins
Director: Diego Luna
Starring: Geraldine Alejandra, Karina Gidi, Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, Gerardo Ruíz-Esparza, José María Yazpik
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Network
Format: Cinema
Country: Mexico

Acclaimed Mexican actor Diego Luna makes his feature debut as a director with Abel, a family drama about the love of a mother for her son, which touches on subjects ranging from the pain of dealing with mental illness, to the effect the lack of a father can have on a family. Produced by his own film company, Canana films, Abel represents a labour of love for Diego Luna from start to finish.

Abel (Christopher Ruíz-Esparza) is just 9 years old when, having spent two years in an institution following the departure of his father, he is brought back home to be reintegrated into his family. His mother Cecelia (Karina Gidi) instructs Abel’s siblings Selene (Geraldine Alejandra) and Paúl (Gerardo Ruíz Esparza, real life brother of Christopher) not to challenge Abel or do anything which might upset him. This becomes something of a challenge when Abel starts to believe that he is the childrens’ father, and Cecelia’s husband.

Disturbed by some of his behaviour, yet delighted that her son has begun to communicate with his family again, Cecelia encourages the children to play along with the fantasy. Things become complicated when Abel’s father Anselmo (José María Yazpik) returns to the home, and is less willing than others to take his place in the new familial hierarchy…


The premise of Abel offers many comic possibilities, each one of which is lapped up with child-like enthusiasm by Diego Luna. Scenes in which Abel waits calmly in the living room to size up Selene’s boyfriend, or examines Anselmo’s new car, insisting that he should take it for a spin, are the stuff of sketch comedy - comic and surreal in equal measure, and exposing the characters’ mixed reactions to the tragic humour of the situation perfectly. However, Luna is also aware that viewing the concept from the purely comedic perspective of a child behaving like an adult would be worthy of a ten minute sketch at the most, and he is equally adept at highlighting the stress that the situation causes and the fragility of Abel’s situation.

The possibility of Abel being institutionalised for a second time looms over Cecelia as she struggles with the morality of holding onto her son when he is living a delusion. Much of the emotion of this moral dilemma is drawn out by Karina Gidi’s performance, as she communicates the deep, unconditional love that Cecelia has for Abel, as well as the suffering that the situation causes her.

A lot of pressure was put on Christopher Ruíz-Esparza to play the central character in such an intensely emotional film, especially considering he is a non-professional actor. Diego Luna cast him from open auditions from the children in the area in which the film was shot, feeling that it was important to cast someone who had no acting experience. The results are remarkable as Ruíz-Esparzo not only provides the majority of the film’s comedy - the scenes in which he behaves like an adult are priceless - but provides a character who perfectly encapsulates all of the themes at the heart of the film - seeming vulnerable enough to be so deserving of his mother’s love, but deranged and violent enough that it is difficult to argue against him needing closer medical attention, for his own safety and others. The casting of his brother Gerardo was an unexpected stroke of luck, as the bond between them translates onto the screen and provides some touching, and very funny moments.

For a film with such a bizarre premise, Abel is shot in a very realistic way; most of the dramatic scenes take place in mid to wide shots with limited camera movement. This proves to be a good decision on Luna’s part, as it keeps what is happening on camera very intense and realistic, avoiding alienating the audience by having it seem ridiculous. It is important to Luna that the impact of his story is not lost amongst the more fantastical comic elements, and framing it through a realist perspective stops this from happening. In scenes with less dialogue, however, Luna is allowed to be more experimental, and softly focused close ups of plants, water and bugs provide moments of contemplation, and forefront a theme that runs throughout the film - the wonder of the childhood imagination.

The film would have benefitted from a more developed exploration of Abel’s father, as it was his absence that initially caused Abel’s regression. We are never offered an analysis of his motivations for leaving his family, and, as a result, he is fairly one dimensional. However, as Abel is, at its heart, a celebration of a mother’s love for her son this can be forgiven. Through incredible performances, writing and directing, Diego Luna’s film is a touching, beautiful and heartfelt exploration of a truly unique character.


Comic and affecting in equal measure; Abel is a remarkable achievement for a first time director. The pain of a lost childhood is explored in heart rendering detail, yet there is enough love in the powerful performances of Luna’s cast to ensure that, despite the depths of suffering to which we are taken, Abel remains an uplifting film. PK

NEWS: Cinema Release: Men On The Bridge

Men On The Bridge comes to UK cinemas having been enthusiastically received at more than thirty festivals worldwide, winning Best Film Awards at Istanbul, Ankara and Adana, as well as the London Turkish Film Festival’s award for distribution in the UK and Ireland.

Spanning the divide between Europe and Asia, Istanbul’s gridlocked Bosphorus Bridge is the focal point of Men On The Bridge, a wonderful portrait of life in the rapidly changing sprawl of today’s city. Following the lives of three young inhabitants from the suburbs who use the bridge daily, the film uses non professional actors to tell their individual stories as their paths occasionally cross, and they struggle to realise their aspirations.

Unemployed Fikret (17) illegally sells roses in the traffic jam on the bridge, and would do anything to have a real job. Umit (28)) drives a shared taxi, crossing the bridge every day, hoping that the work will allow him to rent a better apartment to satisfy his wife Cecile. Traffic cop Murat, who is stationed on the bridge, feels alone amongst the solid line of cars. Every night at home, he logs onto the internet, hoping that he might one day find love on line. Originally from Eastern Turkey, he finds the city a lonely place.

Unaware of each other, Fikret, Umut and Murat intersect in the rush hour every day, along with millions of other Instanbulites, coping with the challenges of life in this frenetic city. Their stories are simple and universal, and are bought alive by the first rate performances of the excellent cast.

Film: Men On The Bridge
Release date: 28th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Asli Özge
Starring: Fikret Portakal, Murat Tokgöz, Umut İlker, Cemile İlker
Genre: Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: Cinema
Country: Germany/Turkey/Netherlands

NEWS: Cinema Release: Biutiful

Biutiful is a love story between a father and his children, from the director of 21 Grams, Babel And Amores Perros.

This is the journey of Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amidst the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona. His livelihood is earned out of bounds, but his sacrifices for his children know no bounds.

Like life itself, this is a circular tale that ends where it begins. As fate encircles him and thresholds are crossed, a dim, redemptive road brightens, illuminating the inheritances bestowed from father to child, and the paternal guiding hand that navigates life’s corridors, whether bright, bad – or biutiful.

Film: Biutiful
Release date: 28th January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 148 mins
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez, Eduard Fernández, Blanca Portillo, Ruben Ochandiano
Genre: Drama
Studio: Optimum
Format: Cinema
Country: Spain/Mexico

NEWS: Cinema Release: The Portuguese Nun

Award-winning French director Eugène Green’s latest feature, The Portuguese Nun, premieres at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from 21st to 30th January 2011 before touring to venues around the country.

Green’s international acclaim has been reflected in a retrospective at the Ciné Lumière in 2007 and sell-out screenings at the London Film Festival. His works include Le Pont Des Arts (2004), Le Monde Vivant (2003) and Toutes Les Nuits (2001).

Displaying Green’s distinctive minimalist style, the film follows Julie de Hauranne (Leonor Baldaque), a young French actress whose mother is Portuguese, as she visits Lisbon for the first time. She is there to act in a film inspired by Guilleragues’ Letters Of A Portuguese Nun, an infamous 17th-century work, widely believed to be a work of epistolary fiction.

Julie becomes fascinated by a nun who prays each night at the Nossa Senhora do Monte Chapel on Graça Hill. During her stay, the young woman has a number of encounters that, at first, seem ephemeral and without consequence. But one night, after finally speaking with the nun, she glimpses her destiny and the meaning of her life.

The Portuguese Nun joins an eclectic tradition of films featuring nuns and monks: from the recent Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods And Men (2010) and Michael Whyte’s Notting Hill-based documentary No Greater Love (2009), to classics such as Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947), Manoel de Oliveira’s The Convent (1995), Fred Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959), Ken Russell’s controversial The Devils (1971), and a section of Rossellini's neorealist epic Paisà (1946).

Film: The Portuguese Nun
Release date: 21st January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 127 mins
Director: Eugène Green
Starring: Leonor Baldaque, Francisco Mozos, Diogo Dória, Ana Moreira, Eugène Green
Genre: Drama
Studio: ICA
Format: Cinema
Country: Portugal/France

NEWS: Cinema Release: Dhobi Ghat

The lives of four people intertwine on the streets of Mumbai in this drama from first-time director Kiran Rai.

Taking a break from her day job, US banker Shai (Monica Dogra) arrives in Mumbai to explore her passion - photography.

After falling for withdrawn artist Arun (Aamir Khan), Shai is shocked to see her advances falling on stony ground due to his relationship anxieties. Shortly afterwards, she becomes friends with local laundryman Munna (Prateik Babbar), and although their backgrounds are worlds apart, they soon become lovers. But Shia's love for Arun hasn't gone away, and it's not long before she seeks out her former paramour one last time.

Film: Dhobi Ghat
Release date: 21st January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 97 mins
Director: Kiran Rao
Starring: Aamir Khan, Prateik Babbar, Monica Dogra, Kriti Malhotra, Danish Hussain
Genre: Bollywood/Drama
Studio: UTV
Format: Cinema
Country: India

NEWS: Cinema Release: Yamla Pagla Deewana

Bollywood comedy drama following a pair of confidence tricksters, Dharam Singh (Dharmendra) and his son, Gajodhar (Bobby Deol).

Their carefree nature allows them to carry out a number of successful heists in Banaras. When Paramveer Singh Dhillon (Sunny Deol) turns up professing to be Dharam's long lost son, the con men allow him to join their team, intending to put his muscle strength to good use in their schemes.

In the meantime, Gajodhar falls for a beautiful Punjabi woman named Saheba (Kulraj Randhawa). But when her brothers capture her so that she cannot marry Gajodhar, Paramveer comes up with a plot to save her.

Film: Yamla Pagla Deewana
Release date: 14th January 2011
Certificate: PG
Running time: 186 mins
Director: Samir Karnik
Starring: Dharmendra, Bobby Deol, Sunny Deol, Kulraj Randhawa, Nafisa Ali
Genre: Bollywood/Comedy/Drama
Studio: Eros
Format: Cinema
Country: India

NEWS: Andrei Konchalovsky – The Directorspective

The Barbican in London has an upcoming Directorspective on Andrei Konchalovsky.

Internationally acclaimed for his work as a director, for both stage and screen, Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky studied under celebrated Mosfilm veteran Mikhail Romm. His collaborations with fellow student Andrei Tarkovsky included co-scripting Andrei Rublev, and his filmmaking career has seen him receive both Soviet censorship and a plethora of major awards.

Barbican Film welcomes Andrei Konchalovsky to open this focus on works he has chosen especially for this Directorspective between Thursday, 20th and Sunday 30th January 2011.

The films being shown are:

Gloss (2007)
This screening will be introduced by the director.
Based on real events, Konchalovsky’s self-penned satire Gloss is an incisive comment on the fashion industry and proof that all that glitters is not gold. The film follows a pretty girl from a small town as she leaves her family and heads to Moscow, determined to become a supermodel. But in the world of high fashion, success comes at a high price.

House Of Fools (2002)
This screening will be followed by a ScreenTalk with the director.
Venice Grand Special Jury Prize winner, and worldwide hit, House Of Fools is an unbiased, yet defiantly antiwar expose of the Chechen conflict from the perspective of psychiatric patients in an institution on the Russian border. At times darkly comic, this is a brilliantly crafted, ultimately touching drama about our need to imagine and dream.

First Teacher (1964)
Konchalovsky’s debut feature, First Teacher explores the impact of soviet ideology on a traditional community facing inevitable and permanent change. Sent by the communist party to educate local children, an enthusiastic teacher arrives in a remote village to find that his progressive views conflict with traditional principles.

Uncle Vanya (1970)
Konchalovsky’s faithful adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s atmospheric masterpiece of modern drama, Uncle Vanya is a melancholic commentary on the listless and worn-out lives of those around the Serebryakov estate.

For more information, include screening days/times, head to the Barbican’s website here, or phone the Box Office on 0845 120 7527.

House Of Fools

TRAILER: Cinema Release: Abel

Check out the trailer below for Abel, which is released in cinemas on 7th January 2011.

More information on this film can be found by clicking here.

NEWS: Cinema Release: No One Killed Jessica

Raj Kumar Gupta directs this Bollywood crime thriller set in New Delhi and based on a real murder case.

Model and socialite Jessica Lal was shot dead while serving as a celebrity barmaid at an upmarket New Delhi restaurant in 1999.

The film stars Rani Mukherjee as Meera, the tough-talking investigative television journalist who joins forces with Jessica's sister Sabrina (Vidya Balan) to fight for justice after Jessica's killers are controversially acquitted by the Indian courts.

Film: No One Killed Jessica
Release date: 7th January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 166 mins
Director: Raj Kumar Gupta
Starring: Rani Mukherjee, Vidya Balan, Rajesh Sharma, Shireesh Sharma
Genre: Bollywood/Crime/Drama/Thriller
Studio: UTV
Format: Cinema
Country: India

NEWS: Cinema Release: Amer

The spirit of the Italian ‘giallo’ movie genre is brought vividly to life in Amer, the dazzling debut feature from the co-writing and co-directing team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani.

Recalling the captivating cinematic style, recurring themes and bold visual motifs seen in the works of directors such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci, Cattet and Forzani’s highly original and visionary tribute to the Italian masters is a virtually dialogue-free, Freudian tale of sexual awakening, obsession and murder.

The story unfolds in three parts as Ana (played, respectively, by actresses Cassandra Forêt, Charlotte Eugène-Guibeaud and Marie Bos) progresses from childhood through adolescence to womanhood. For Ana, in all three stages of her life, fear, sensuality and the threat of violence are constant companions, each lurking in her mind’s eye and waiting to take physical form.

Scored (in ‘Tarantino style’) utilizing recycled Italian movie soundtrack music composed by Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Adriano Celentano and Stelvio Cipriani, and destined for cult status, Amer is a must-see for fans of art house, horror and independent cinema.

Amer has won several international film awards, including the New Visions Award at Sitges International Film Festival and the Public’s Choice Award at Montreal Festival of New Cinema.

Film: Amer
Release date: 7th January 2011
Certificate: 18
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani
Starring: Marie Bos, Delphine Brual, Harry Cleven, Bianca Maria D'Amato, Cassandra Foret
Genre: Drama/Horror/Thriller
Studio: Anchor Bay
Format: Cinema
Country: France/Belgium

NEWS: Cinema Release: Abel

Directed by Diego Luna and executive produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and John Malkovich.

Christopher Ruiz-Esparza (a mere 9 years of age at the time of filming) stars as Abel, a young boy whose confounding behaviour and refusal to speak has landed him in a mental health facility. His single mother is convinced that a reunion between Abel and his younger brother and older sister would be the answer to repairing his condition, so she arranges for Abel’s doctor to release the boy for a single week.

Abel starts speaking the day after returning home but the joy of the mother quickly turns into confusion as the child starts speaking and behaving as a fully-grown adult - her missing partner. Not wishing to worsen his condition, the mother and the siblings go along with Abel’s unorthodox, strange behaviour. But then his father decides to show up…

Disturbing, surreal and darkly funny, Abel deals with an important issue in Mexico – parental absenteeism - increasingly common as many Mexican men abandon their families to find work in the United States.

Film: Abel
Release date: 7th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 82 mins
Director: Diego Luna
Starring: Geraldine Alejandra, Karina Gidi, Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, Gerardo Ruíz-Esparza, José María Yazpik
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Network
Format: Cinema
Country: Mexico