Movies by Mills (May 2018) by Brian Mills

CONTENTS Page 3 4-7

Editorial Redoubtable During the making of one of his films, French film director Jean-Luc Godard falls in love with 17-year-old actress Anne Wiazemsky and later marries her.

8-11

A Gentle Creature A woman lives in a small village in Russia. One day she receives a parcel she sent to her husband, serving in prison. Confused and angered, she sets out to find why her package was returned to sender.

12-15

Submergence In a room with no windows on the Eastern Coast of Africa, a Scotsman, James More, is held captive by Jihadist fighters. Thousands of miles away in the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders prepares to dive in a Submersible to the ocean floor.

16-19

Jeune Femme In her early-thirties, broke, and in the wake of a humbling break-up, a spirited, yet rudderless young woman finds herself struggling to get by in the bustling Parisian metropolis; however, if she can it there, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll make it anywhere.

20-28

Cannes Film Festival A look at this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scheduled screenings at the most prestigous festival in the world.

29-30

31 32

Extras DVDs of the Month: Faces Places Mountains May Depart Poster: Submergence Poster: Redoubtable PHOTO CREDITS: Thunderbird Releasing: 1,4,6,7,32. Artificial Eye: 16,18,19. Arrow Films: 8,10,11. Lionsgate: 12,14,15,31.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank the following for their help in providing images for this issue of Movies by Mills. Anjali Mandalia @ Thunderbird Releasing. Emma Deakins @ AR-PR.CO.UK A Hall @ Lionsgatefilms.co.uk Hannah Farr @Curzon.com

www.moviesbymills.com

EDITORIAL Welcome to the 61st issue of Movies by Mills. May is the month of the Cannes Film Festival, the most famous and glamorous film festival in the world. Among the earliest pioneers of films were the Lumière Brothers who invented the cinematograph which showed moving pictures. The first public showing was a short film showing workers leaving a factory. The Cannes Film Festival opened in September 1939 with The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The festival was to be presided over by Louis Lumiere, but closed after the opening day, due to the outbreak of World War 2. MbM proudly looks at this year’s film programme at Cannes which runs from May 8-19. Our cover feature review is Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable, starring Louis Garrel as Jean Luc-Godard. Other reviews include A Gentle Creature, Submergence and Jeune Femme. Extras, our regular feature, has 2 DVDs of the month: Faces Places and Mountains May Depart.

Enjoy the read. Brian Mills Magazine Editor

Paul Ridler Magazine Designer

www.moviesbymills.com

REDOUBTABLE Directed by Michel Hazanavicius Starring: Louis Garrel, Stacey Martin, Bérénice Bejo, Micha Lescot. Today’s cinema is dead, I can’t do it anymore. I need to invent something new. True political cinema. - Godard At the end of Agnes Varda’s Faces Places, she goes to call on an old friend Jean-Luc Godard but he fails to turn up for her last photograph, which leaves her in tears. “Godard isn’t a “nice man” explains Hazanavicius the director of Redoubtable, “he has never tried to be. He was very violent; he behaved badly in public with numerous people.” There is a dividing line with Godard: the filmmaker of the ‘60s when he made one of the most talked about film debuts of any director: A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) and along with Chabrol, Truffaut, Melville launched the New Wave, a movement which discarded the conventions of mainstream cinema and emphasized direct human emotions and impulsive action. A Bout de Souffle told of a young man on the run in Paris. Jean Paul Belmondo starred as Michel Poiccard playing opposite the sensuously stunning Jean Seberg as his girlfriend. The film was an immediate success with critics and audiences alike. It seemed no film that Godard would make could ever compete with the innovative freshness and cool of A Bout de Souffle, but then came Pierrot le Fou (Perrot Goes Wild) in 1965. It was an ultra-rich masterpiece containing elements of earlier films, but none showed the visual beauty of this one though Contempt came close. Pierrot is a humorously satirical but charming in its outrageousness. Once again it stars Belmondo and another Godard regular Anna Karina who move from one ridiculous situation to another. Rarely do you see a film that entices you to watch it again and again and still see things that you never noticed before – the film is deliciously serendipitous. But then there Marxist, which deprecating of Godard trashes streets.

comes Godard the man – the political revolutionary and he became and from that moment on Godard was selfhis own work which is perfectly captured in Redoubtable. all of his films and he joins workers and rioters on the

But where the film manages to hold the audience, not easy when your protagonist is uninspiring and unlikeable, is by casting Stacy Martin as Anne Wiazemsky because the film is a love story. Stacy is remarkable as Hazanavicios explains: 4

www.moviesbymills.com

“I knew Stacy from Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac,” and was impressed with her performance. Even more so after I met her, since she is very different from the character in the film, I don’t know how she coped during the shooting of our film, but in each scene, she managed to impose an authorative tenderness that, in the face of opposition, makes her love the character she played. In the end, she embodies a very intelligent woman, lover and friend. And with an immensely graceful beauty. To be drawn into their love story, I needed the audience to fall in love with her from the start. To achieve this, I tried to treat her like a pop object, and film her as such. And for the first time I confronted a couple, the representation of love and sexuality. It is through her that the film opens to life, sensuality and love. It is her character that tells the story, and it is because she loves Godard, despite all his flaws, that we accept him. She is the fixed point of the film. Comedy also plays a big part in the film because Godard is clumsy and therefore funny. In a way he is Buster Keatonish. He seems to be always tripping on the carpet, always mumbling to himself and the funniest of all: braking his glasses on so many occasions…a slapstick humourist. There is also the scene of the argument in the car, when they are returning from Cannes. There are six characters crammed together for a sequence-shot that necessitated one and a half days work. The most complicated thing was for Hazanvicious to calibrate the timing: the management of time and silence between each line. He had to leave the silences, and also leave time for the silences to respond to other silences. To let the tension settle, grow, explode, wind down, start again…All this has to be extremely precise and requires a lot of time, a lot of work, especially when you have to tune all the actors to the same movement. Of course, it would have been easier to cut, but he wanted the scene to be a sequence-shot. He worked on the editing live with the actors. What was Godard’s reaction to the film? “Before the shoot, I sent him a letter. No reply. Then he made it known that he wanted to read the screenplay. I sent it to him. No answer. I suggested he’d see the film. He had someone reply he didn’t want to see it”. For Louis Garrel it was a huge challenge to play Godard ad he is still a cult figure in France, but the prospect of playing him did not scare Garrel. The greatest thing he achieved is that he didn’t turn him into a caricature. It was an interpretation of Godard, he made him humble. For Stacy Martin she said that if she could keep one image of the film it would be the scene in the car. “It was very hard not to laugh! I didn’t have much dialogue, I was a bit of an observer, and it was incredible to watch such a furious debate take place in a tiny car. It was also very hot and we were all crammed together. We had to do about thirty takes. Instead of giving us a big talk beforehand, Michel played us part of the score from “The Magnificent Seven” on set! Right away, a team spirit emerged”.

www.moviesbymills.com

Jean Luc-Godard(Louis Garrel) in Redoubtable.

www.moviesbymills.com

Jean Luc-Godard (Louis Garrel)and Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) in Redoubtable.

www.moviesbymills.com

A GENTLE CREATURE Directed by Sergey Loznitsa Starring: Liya Akhedzhakova, Valeriu Andriutã, Vasillina Makovtseva. I need to know what happened to my husband. - A gentle creature Nominated for a Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, A Gentle Creature is a political swipe at Putin’s Russia and the country’s deplorable penal system and the towns adjacent to the prisons as being pits of crime. The director is a Ukrainian and Ukraine is still not part of the USSR. A woman, credited as A Gentle Creature (Vasillina Makovtseva) living in a small Russian village receives a returned package which was sent to her imprisoned husband. She goes to the post office to find out why it was returned and is told by a grumpy woman that she has no idea why it was sent back, nor does she care. Next! So, unable to contact him, she embarks on a journey to the prison, only to face the frustrating futility of bureaucracy…but she never gives up. The film is an assault on the senses and should be nominated for the feel-bad- movie of the year as it is an insufferable experience to sit through its 2 hours 21 minutes running time, endurable only for bona fide masochists, but otherwise it is a torturous sentence of imprisonment.

The unnamed woman wants to find her husband and a way out of the diabolical situation she finds herself in; likewise, the audience is trying to find a reason why it should bother to empathise for a protagonist whose emotionless countenance remains the same no matter what is happening around her; if she smiled, it would be a face-quake. Agonizingly, we watch as the woman vainly attempts to find out what happened and why she is not getting any co-operation from the authorities that supposedly should to be able to help her, but instead are rude and deceptive which she amazingly accepts with unbelievable patience and few words. One absurd situation follows another until you are left wondering whether you are watching a black comedy or a horror film? It would ease our frustration if she sobbed, if she yelled, if she screamed…but react…show that she is alive not a cadaver! 8

www.moviesbymills.com

Who does she trust? The police are corrupt, helpers are unreliable and leave her bewildered if that were possible. She attracts deplorable characters to her like a human magnet: drunkards and pimps seem to be her speciality. After a dull bus ride, she is needlessly patted down by male police officers and verbally abused by a drunk in a nearby cell before boarding a train to the East. Leaving the screening in a fit of depression, I traipsed my way through the rain towards the nearest Underground Station, heading for home. I tried to erase the grim images from the screen of my mind and entice a smile to my face which wasn’t easy, knowing that I would have to replay the film to be able to write about it.

What did Loznitsa hope to find by peering into the Russian soul other than a blackness that would envelope him and all those that sought to follow him. Well his purpose it seems, according to the film’s press notes, was to depict in detail the country’s vast penal system, a nexus of crime and punishment that has had a profound impact on the nation’s psyche, having touched so many citizens’ lives one way or another. While the heroine of the film doesn’t even get through the gates of the prison or even succeed in handing over a care parcel for her incarcerated husband, who we never see, the film shows how the towns adjacent to Russian prisons tend to be snake pits of crime and venality. But as the film has little or no chance of being a commercial success, Loznitsa’s purpose seems pointless. This may have worked as a documentary, but its sombre subject matter provides no entertainment value whatsoever. Film festival patrons are unlikely to support it unless their remit from editors is that they must. One journalist mentioned that the film probably doesn’t need to be 143 minutes long, that deserves to be credited as the understatement of the year! The several drunken gatherings depicted, including an especially bawdy party at the home of a sinister, butch-looking woman who offers the heroine free shelter are echoed by a banquet at the very end of the film, where many of the characters come back. Cleaned and groomed and dressed in white and red costumes as they make vacuous, hypocritical speeches, they form a dream-state Politburo of evil whose appearance presages the darkest moment for the heroine, a brutal rape that, the final scene suggests, will happen over and over again. If, dear reader, you feel that to watch A Gentle Creature would be a gruelling ordeal – you would be absolutely correct.

www.moviesbymills.com

A Gentle Creature (Vasilina Makovtseva in A Gentle Creature

A Gentle Creature (Vasilina Makovtseva) and Taxi Driver (Sergey Fedorov) in A Gentle Creature.

www.moviesbymills.com

A Gentle Creature (Vasilina Makovtseva) in A Gentle Creature.

www.moviesbymills.com

SUBMERGENCE Directed by Wim Wenders. Starring: Alicia Vikander, James McAvoy I’m going to remember this. - James More On paper this film has a lot going for it, first and foremost Wim Wenders, who directed the classic Alice in the Cities which told of a journalist with writer’s block who becomes the guardian of eight-year-old Alice when her mother leaves her with him briefly at an American airport, only never to return. What develops is an unlikely friendship between the two of them as they embark on a journey to find Alice’s grandmother. Walter Salles, director of The Motorcycle Diaries, said that this was one of the films that altered his perception of cinema.

The other classic from Wenders was of course Wings of Desire which was a tribute to one of the world’s beautiful cities – Berlin. An angel oversees the city from the roofs of tall buildings and can tune into the thoughts, fears, emotions of the all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he gives up his immortality to come back to earth to be with her. Wings of Desire is a spiritual symphony that feeds the soul. Prior to this, Wenders directed what was to be his most critically acclaimed film: Paris Texas, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and gave Harry Dean Stanton his first starring role.

A new film by Wim Wenders was then a time for cineastes to get excited about…. but it seems according to the feedback of criticism to his current release Submergence, he is no longer revered as the consensus is to trash the film as a clumsy mess. Let’s track in to the storyline. Two people are brought together by a chance encounter. James is a Scottish spy about to embark on a dangerous mission in Somalia. Danny is a professor and a biomathematician about to go to the bottom of the ocean to explore what lifeforms might exist. James and Danny meet each other at a hotel in France and in the space of a just a few days, they fall in love, and are eager to continue their relationship once they return from their exploits. It is the sea will bring them back together and will also separate them again. 12

www.moviesbymills.com

James is kidnapped by jihadists and believing him to be working for the CIA is tortured to make him confess. The scenes are gruesomely horrific and worsen as he refuses to tell them anything. Back home Danny is waiting on a text message from him, totally unaware of his predicament as she prepares for her deepsea adventure. Wim Wenders prevents the film from becoming sentimental. It is a love story mystically steeped in unrelenting sadness. He adroitly creates a narrative that is against fanaticism and produces a story which is above the ordinary. Like Wings of Desire, the director uses spirituality to transcend the morbidity and cruelty that humans on planet Earth are capable of committing. The one fault, and it’s a big one, with the film lies with the screen adaptation by Erin Dignam which glaringly shows that Dignam has no idea how to interpret a human courtship, which seems to be written for aliens rather that humans. Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy are brilliant actors and can’t be blamed for a screenplay that misfires and too often produces dialogue which is so bad that no intelligent characters, which James and Danny are, would realistically be expected to deliver them. Danny, warming to James, asks him a childlike question: “What ocean is your favourite?” If you were unfortunate to have seen Sean Penn’s directional debut The Last Face, which was an embarrassment to Penn and to Dignam who tortured us by violating our ears with his pathetic, unrealistic dialogue:

“You know that girl I was dancing with? She watched her sister get raped to death, and she was raped as well.” This should have sealed Dignam’s fate as a screenwriter, but it didn’t, so Submergence should. It is unfortunate that the film was directed by Wenders as it a low-point in his filmography though it still manages to produce a few Wender’s trademarks. The critics were right in stamping their disapproval of the film; one of the problems that faces a great film director is that they are expected to make films of a high standard and when that doesn’t happen the critics will pounce on the opportunity to deride them. Hopefully Wenders who is now 72, will still direct a film that will leave its audiences and critics in awe. Wender’s Submergence has tarnished his career as a director, but it is still richly laden with films which will play in our heads and hearts forever: Buena Vista Social Club, Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas, The State of Things, Lightning Over Water (an inspiring documentary celebrating the life and career of movie director Nicholas Ray) and An American Friend. Amongst that lot of excellent films, any director would be allowed a film like Submergence – a blip in his career.

www.moviesbymills.com

James (James McAvoy and Danny (Alicia Vikander) in Submergence.

Danny (Alicia Vikander) and James (James McAvoy) in Submergence. 14

www.moviesbymills.com

Danny (Alicia Vikander) and James (James McAvoy) in Submergence.

www.moviesbymills.com

JEUNE FEMME (aka Montparnasse Bienvenue) Directed by Léonor Serraille. Starring: Laetita Dosch, Souleymane Seye Ndiaye, Gregoire Monsaiingeon. I was everything for you, and now I’m nothing - Paula

Paula is recounting her life in a disjointed way and heated manner from the hospital to which she has been taken after trying to break down the door of Joachim, a famous photographer, with her head. Laetita Dosch plays the crazy, rambling, irritating Paula and nails a remarkable performance in the vibrancy of the character. After her split-up with Joachim, Paula is left to fend for herself in Paris, broke, no job, nothing in fact except her cat, which is really Joachim’s, but she stole it. The early scenes which show Paula being interviewed for jobs are quite hilarious as she tells the would-be employer everything about herself without him being able to get a word in. Anything that comes into her mind, and not all complimentary…unending verbosity. And she recounts her past in the same way with doctors, old friends, her mother…she just can’t stop, a serious case of verbal diarrhoea. But Paula is resilient and if she can make a go of it in Paris, she can make it anywhere. She checks in at a seedy hotel, where one can imagine unwanted bugs in the mattress, but at least she has somewhere to stay. When asked about her parents, she replies: I don’t see them anymore, I can’t even believe that we live on the same planet. She gets a job of looking after a little girl, but soon the mother is complaining to her that she doesn’t buy anything but frozen lasagne, sweets and red fish. But the lonely child learns to love her wacky nanny. And as a further plus for Paula and for us the audience, her cat is ensconced in the new home – and what a beautiful cat it is – stealing every scene it is in. One reviewer of the film has suggested that if there was an award at Cannes for cats, it would be a clear winner; I concur. So, life begins to improve for Paula and she begins to gain self-confidence. And with help of two new friends, she realises that 16

www.moviesbymills.com

the life she imagined with Joachim, her ex-boyfriend and pretentious photographer, is probably not the one she wants at all. Despite the protagonist’s misadventures, you cannot help but like her and empathise with her struggles. What adds to the film is a melancholic electro soundtrack from composer Julie Roue. Jeune Femme was screened at Cannes in Un Certain Regard section of the festival and was warmly received. Like a Cassavetes film, it would appear to improvise but it was all scripted. The mainstay of the film is the powerful performance of Laetitia Dosch as Paula. She is in every emotional scene and is simply amazing. Her filmography shows a number of varied films but the one that stands out is Sophie’s Misfortunes which tells of a little girl named Sophie who cannot resist temptation of the forbidden and what she loves most is to do stupid things with her cousin. The similarity of the character with that of is quite apparent and as Laetitia is also in minor character named Noemie and one wonders from the character of Sophie and used in her though the film was nothing special.

Paula in Jeune Femme the film, playing a how much she learnt portrayal of Paula;

But besides the extraordinarily talented Laetitia Dosch, there is the wonderous fact that the film is the directional debut of Léonor Serraille who also wrote the screenplay. It is a remarkable achievement. I look forward with great expectations to see what her next film will be. Many will be able to relate to the goofiness of Paula and as a person who really tries hard to be as honest as she can in the crazy situations that she keeps finding herself. The chance of her getting back with Joachim is not only remote but as she admits not a good idea as he is an oaf and does not understand her, so the loss is Joachim’s not hers. In the year of the celebration of women in film, Paula woman that we can raise a glass to. She is hilariously compassionate, defensive, habitually confusing herself others, persevering, no matter what life flings at her admirable optimism and is strong-willed.

is a real funny, and with

She is the sort of person that if you met her for a cup of coffee, you would find her talkative and funny and totally entertaining. This is the joy that Laetitia brings to the character. Wonderful and worthy of any awards that come her way. Bravo! Laetitia has already built up an excellent filmography, and it is worth finger-walking through her films on IMDB to check them out.

www.moviesbymills.com

Paula (Laetita Dosch) and Cat in Jeune Femme.

Paula (Laetita Dosch) in Jeune Femme. 18

www.moviesbymills.com

Paula (Laetita Dosch) in Jeune Femme.

Ousmane (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye) and Paula (Laetita Dosch) in Jeune Femme.

www.moviesbymills.com

FILM FEST FOLLOWER CANNES May 8th-19th-2018

OPENING NIGHT FILM EVERYBODY KNOWS Directed by Asghar Farhadi Starring: Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem. Carolina, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.

COMPETITION AT WAR Directed by Stephane Brize Starring: Vincent Lindon. Two years ago, The Perrin Industry Factory employer signed an agreement asking senior managers and workers to accept a pay-cut.

DOGMAN Directed by Matteo Garrone. Starring: Adam Dionisi, Francesco Acquaroli. No Plot Given

THE PICTURE BOOK Directed by Jean-Luc Godard Nothing but silence. Nothing but a revolutionary song. A story in five chapters, like the five fingers of a hand.

ASAKO I & II Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi Starring: Masahiro Higashide, Erika Karata, Kôji Seto Asako is a 21-year-old woman, living in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku who has a free spirit. One day Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now living in Tokyo, meets Ryohei, who looks like her ex-boyfriend.

www.moviesbymills.com

SORRY ANGEL Directed by Christophe Honore Starring: AdĂ¨le Wismes, Vincent Lacoste, Pierre Deladonchamps. No Plot Given

GIRLS OF THE SUN Directed by Eva Husson. Starring: Golshifteh Farahani, Emmanuelle Bercot. No Plot Given

ASH IS PUREST WHITE Directed by Jia Zhang-Ke Starring: Tao Zhao, Fran Liao. A story of violent love within a time frame spanning from 2001 to 2017.

SHOPLIFTERS Directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu Starring: Kirin Kiki, Lily Frankt. A family of small-time crooks take in a child they find on the streets.

CAPERNAUM Directed by Nadine Labaki A documentary set in the Middle Eastern fishing village of Capernaum about a child who launched a lawsuit.

BURNING Directed by Lee Chang-Dong Jong-Soo, a part time worker, bumps into Hae-Mi while delivering, who used to live in the same neighbourhood. Hae-Mi asks him to look after her cat while she is on a trip to Africa.

BLACK KLANSMAN Directed by Spike Lee Starring: Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier. An African-American police officer successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan and become the head of The Local Chapter.

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE Directed by David Robert Mitchell Starring: Riley Keough, Jimmi Simpson, Andrew Garfield. A man becomes obsessed with the strange circumstances of a billionaire moguls murder and the kidnapping of a girl.

THREE FACES Directed by Jafar Panahi. No Plot Given

COLD WAR Directed by Pavel Pawlikowski Starring: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc. A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched, set against the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris.

www.moviesbymills.com

LAZZARO FELICE Directed Alba Rohrwacher. Starring: Nicoletia Braschi, Sergei López, Alba Rohrwacher. No Plot Given

YOMEDDINE Directed by Abu Bakr Shawky Staring: Rady Gamal, Ahmed Abdelhafiz. A Coptic leper and his orphaned apprentice leave the leper colony for the first time and embark on a journey across Egypt to search for what is left of their families.

SUMMER Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov. Starring: Irina Starshenbaum, Teo Yoo, Roman Bilyk. No Plot Given

KNIFE + HEART Directed by Yann Gonzalez. Starring: Vanessa Paradis, Kate Moran, Nicolas Maury. No Plot Given

THE WILD PEAR TREE Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylon. Starring: Serkan Keskin, Hazar Ergüçlü. An aspiring writer returns to her native village in rural Turkey but she becomes overwhelmed by her father’s debts.

UN CERTAIN REGARD DONBASS Directed by Sergey Loznitsa Starring: Valeriu Andriutã, Boris Kamorzin, Sergey Kolesov No Plot Given

ANGEL FACE Directed by Vanessa Filho Starring: Marion Cotillard, Alban Lenoir. No Plot Given

BORDER Directed by Ali Abassi Starring: Eva Melander, Eero Milanoff. After a customs officer develops a strange attraction to the suspect she is investigating, the case’s revelations soon call into question her entire existence.

EL ÁNGEL Directed by Luis Ortega. Starring: Cecilia Roth, Chino Darin, Luis Onecco. No Plot Given 22

www.moviesbymills.com

EUPHORIA Directed by Valeria Golino. Starring: Ricardo Scamarcio, Valerio Mastandrea, Isabella Ferrari. No Plot Given

THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD Directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov Starring: Sultan Abzalov, Tulemis Alishev. After her father's untimely death, Saltanat is forced to trade her idyllic countryside life for the cruel city.

GIRL Directed by Lukas Dhont. Starring: Valentin Dhaentijn, Nele Hardiman. Lara is a 15-year-old girl born in the body of a boy who dreams to become a ballerina.

THE HARVESTERS Directed by Etienne Kallos Starring: Morné Visser, Juliana Ventner, Alex van Dyk. No Plot Given

IN MY ROOM Directed by Ulrich Köhler. Starring: Hans Löw, Elena Radonicich, Michael Winterborn. A bored man suddenly realizes everyone around him has disappeared though he isn’t sure what happened.

LITTLE TICKLES Directed by Andréa Bescond & Eric Metayer. Starring: Andréa Bescond, Karin Viard, Pierre Deladonchamps. No Plot Given

MUERE, MONSTRUO, MUERE Directed by Alejandro Fadel. Staring:Esteban Bigliardi, Francisco Carrasco, Tania Casciani Rural police officer Cruz investigates the bizarre case of a headless woman's body found in a remote region by the Andes Mountains.

MY FAVOURITE FABRIC Directed by Gaya JISI. Starring: Metin Akdülger, Manal Issa, Ula Tabari. No Plot Given

SOFÍA Directed by Famor Botero Starring: Carolina Barrera, Andrés Bejar, Freddy Beltrán . No Plot Given

www.moviesbymills.com

DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT BIRDS OF PASSAGE Directed by Christina Gallego & Ciro Guerra. Starring: Natalia Reyes. No Plot Given

AMIN Directed by Philippe Faucon Starring: Ouidad Elma, Fantine Harduin, Emmanuelle Devos. No Plot Given

CARMEN y LOLA Directed by Arantxa Echevarria Starring: Moreno Borja, Rafaela León, Zaira Morales. The love story of two Gypsy girls.

BUY ME A GUN Directed by Julia Hernandez Corden. No Plot or Stars Given.

LES CONFINS DU MONDE Directed by Guillaume Nicloux. Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Gerard Depardieu, Kevin Janssens. No Plot Given.

THE SNATCH THIEF Directed by Augustin Toscano. Starring: Sergio Prina, Liliana Juarez, Leon Zelarayan. A robber regrets having brutally hit an elderly woman in order to snatch her handbag and attempts to make-up for the damages he inflicted.

EN LIBERTÉ Directed by Pierre Salvadori Starring: Adèle Haenel, Pio Marmaï, Audrey Tautou. In a town on The French Riviera, Detective Yvonne is a young widow of police chief Santi, a local hero. When she realizes her husband was not exactly the model of virtue so idolized by their young son.

TREAT ME LIKE FIRE Directed by Marie Monge Starring: Tahar Rahim, Stacy Martin, Bruno Wolkowitch. No Plot Given

LEAVE NO TRACE Directed by Debra Granik. Starring: Ben Foster, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey. A father and his 13-year-old daughter are living in a paradisiacal existence in a vast urban park, when a small mistake derails their lives forever. 24

www.moviesbymills.com

THE PLUTO MOMENT Directed by Ming Zhang Starring: Miya Muqi, Hailu Qin, Xuebing Wang. No Plot Given

MANDY Directed by Panos Cosmatos. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache. Mandy is set in the primal wilderness of 1983 where Red Miller, a broken and haunted man hunts an unhinged religious sect who slaughtered the love of his life.

MIRAI Directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Starring: Haru Kuroki, Moka Kamishirrisgh. Animation. A young boy encounters a magical garden which enables him to travel through time and meet his relatives from different eras, with guidance by his younger sister from the future.

LE MONDE EST À TOI Directed by Romain Gavras. Starring: Karin Leklou, Isabelle Adjani. No Plot Given

PETRA Directed by Jaime Rosales. Starring: Bárbara Lennie, Alex Brendemühl. No Plot Given

THE LOAD Directed by Ognjen Glavonic. Starring: Leon Lucev,Pavie Cemerikic. No Plot Given

DEAR SON Directed by Mohammed Ben Attia Starring: Mouna Mejri, Imen Cherif. No Plot Given

TROPPA GRAZIA Directed by Gianni Zanasi. Starring: Alba Roherwacher, Elio Germano. No Plot Given

www.moviesbymills.com

CANNES CLASSICS BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLANCHE Directed by Pamela B. Green. Starring: Alice Guy, Evan Rachel Wood, Andy Samberg. Alice Guy-Blanche, the first female film director, made her first film in 1896 at 23 and went on to make more than 1,000 films.

JANE FONDA IN FIVE ACTS Directed by Susan Lacy. Starring: Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Robert Redford. A documentary which looks at the life, work, activism and controversies of actress and fitness tycoon – Jane Fonda.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood. A celebration of Kubrick’s classic movie on its 50th anniversary.

THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES Directed by Mark Cousins. The film includes access to a lifetime of private drawings and paintings by Welles, most of which have never been made public. Cousins worked closely with Welles’ daughter, Beatrice, during the making of the film.

SEARCHING FOR INGMAR BERGMAN Directed by Margarethe von Trotta Margarethe von Trotta was extremely appreciated by Ingmar Bergman and follows the filmmaker’s footsteps as well as her own past and questions the new generation about the place left by the Swedish master.

BERGMAN – A YEAR IN A LIFE Directed by Jane Magnusson. Describes the existence o0f Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” and “The Seventh Seal”.

THE SEVENTH SEAL Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Starring: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand. A man seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during The Dark Plague.

BEATING HEART Directed by Henri Decoin. Starring: Danielle Darrieux, Claude Dauphin. Danielle Darrieux plays an impoverished reform-school escapee who finds a new lease of life when she enrols in a school for pickpockets.

BICYCLE THIEVES Directed by Vittorio de Sica. Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carel. In post-war Italy, a working-class man’s bicycle is stolen. He and his son set out to find it.

ENAMORADA Directed by Emilio Fernandez. Starring: María Félix, Pedro Armendáriz. During the Mexican revolution, a macho rebel General falls in love with the independent-minded daughter of an aristocrat in the town he is occupying.

TOKYO STORY Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring: Chishû Ryû, Cheko Higashiyama. An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city; but the children have little time for them.

www.moviesbymills.com

VERTIGO

FOUR WHITE SHIRTS

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak.

Directed by Rolandis Kalnins. Starring: Uldis Pulitis, Dina Kuple.

James Stewart portrays an acrophobic Detective hired to trail a friend’s suicidal wife (Novak) after he successfully rescues her from a leap into the Bay. Suddenly he finds himself becoming obsessed with her.

THE APARTMENT Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine. A man tries to rise in his Company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT Directed by Jan Nemec. Starring: Ladislav Jánsky, Antonin Kumbera. A tense brutal story of two Jewish boys who escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another.

1967. Set in Riga and deals with the challenges faced by creative young people under an authoritarian regime where artistic freedom is restricted and natural culture under assault.

THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES Directed by Fernando E. Solanas. Starring: Maria de la Paz, Fernando E. Solanas. Divided into three segments. The documentary has a running time of 3 hours.

LE SPÉCIALISTE Directed by Sergio Corbucci. Starring: Johnny Hallyday, Gastone Moschin. A gunfighter contends with a pacifist sheriff, a seductive banker, a one-armed Mexican bandit, corrupt businessmen and hippies, while trying to learn the secret of the money allegedly stolen by his lynched brother.

WAR AND PEACE Directed by Sergey Bondarchuk. Starring: Lyudmila Saveleva, Vyacheslav Tiehonov. A Russian Prince experiences battle against Napoleon and a troubled relationship with his father and wife.

THE NUN Directed by Jacques Rivette. Starring: Anna Karina, Liselotte Pulver. 18th century France, a girl is forced against her will to, take vows as a nun.

ONE SINGS THE OTHER DOESN’T Directed by Agnès Varda . Starring: Thérèse Liotard, Valérie Mairesse . The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the Women’s Movement in which Agnes Varda was involved.

GREASE Directed by Randal Kleiser. Starring: John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John. Good girl Sandy and Greaser Danny, fell in love over the summer. When they discover they’re now in the same high school, will they be able to rekindle their romance.

www.moviesbymills.com

FIVE AND THE SKIN

BAGDAD CAFÉ

Directed by Pierre Rissient. Starring: Féodor Atkine, Eiko Matsuda.

Directed by Percy Adlon. Starring: Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pownder, Jack Palance.

No Plot Given.

A lonely German woman ends up in the most desolate motel on Earth and decides to make it brighter.

THE ISLAND OF LOVE Directed by Paulo Rocha. Starring: Luis Miguel Cintra, Clara Joana. No Plot Given.

THE BIG BLUE Directed by Luc Besson. Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Jean Reno, Rosanna Arquette. The rivalry between Enzo and Jacques, two childhood friends and now renowned free divers, becomes a beautiful and perilous journey into oneself and the unknown.

DRIVING MISS DAISY Directed by Bruce Beresford. Starring: Morgan Freeman, Jessica Tandy, Dan Aykroyd.

FAD, JAL Directed by Safi Faye. No Plot or Stars given

CYRANO DE BERGERAC Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Vincent Perez. Embarrassed by his large nose, a romantic poet and soldier romances his cousin by proxy.

HYENAS Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty . Starring: Ami Diakhate, Djibril Mamberty.

A once-prosperous Senegalese village has been falling further into poverty year by year until the village elders are reduced to An old Jewish woman and her selling town possessions African American chauffeur in the to pay debts. American South have a relationship that grows and improves over the years.

DESTINY

BLOW FOR BLOW Directed by Martin Karmitz. Starring: Simone Aubin, Jacqueline Auzellaud. No Plot Given.

Directed by Youssef Chahine. Starring: Nour El-Sharif, Hani Salama. The story set in the 12th century in Arab-ruled Spanish province Andalusia, where famed philosophical Averroes is appointed judge.

CLOSING FILM

THE KILLING OF DON QUIXOTE

Directed by Terry Gillam Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Olga Kurylenko.

An advertising executive jumps back and forth in time between the 21st th century London and the 17 century La Mancha where Don Quixote mistakes him for Sancho Panza

www.moviesbymills.com

EXTRAS DVDS OF THE MONTH FACES PLACES Written & Directed by Agnes Varda & JR

Agnes Varda, one of the leading figures of the French New Wave, and acclaimed French photographer and muralist, JR, teamed up to co-direct this enchanting documentary/road movie. Kindred spirits, Varda and JR share a lifelong passion for images and how they are created, displayed, and shared. Together they travel around villages of France in JRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S photo truck meeting locals, learning their stories, and producing epic-size portraits of them. The photos are prominently displayed on houses, barns, storefronts and trains revealing the humanity in their subjects, and themselves. Faces Places documents these heart-warming encounters, as well as the unlikely, tender friendship they formed along the way.

EXTRAS *Chance is the Best Assistant: Agnes Varda and JR on Faces Places. *Letters *Music *Cabin *Theatrical Trailer. www.moviesbymills.com

EXTRAS MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART Directed by Jia Zhangke Starring: Zhao Tao, Zhang Yi.

Mainland master Jia Zhangke scales new heights with Mountains May Depart. The film is both an intimate drama and a decadesspanning epic about how China’s capitalist experiment has affected the lives of one splintered family, leaping in time from the past to the present to the speculative near-future. Jia’s new film is an intensely moving study of how China’s economic book and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

EXTRAS *Booklet essay by Aliza Ma *New York Film Festival: A Conversation with Jia Zhangke. *Trailer 30

www.moviesbymills.com

Movies by Mills is an independent production for the promotion of Art House Movies around the world.

For more information about Movies by Mills please contact us. Also if you have any information about Art House Movies or you would like to advertise with us. Please use the email address below. You could of course Tweet: or Facebook: bajmills@facebook.com info@movies-by-mills.co.uk www.moviesbymills.com