Oddball favorites
A personal list of lesser-known movies I've seen and liked over the past fifty years. Order: Foreign language, UK/Ireland, Canada, Australia/NZ, US.
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- DirectorNikita MikhalkovStarsSergey MakovetskiySergey GarmashApti MagamaevTwelve jurors must decide the fate of a Chechen adolescent charged with murdering his stepfather.
- DirectorAnders Thomas JensenStarsUlrich ThomsenMads MikkelsenNicolas BroA neo-Nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devoted minister.
- DirectorAlain CorneauStarsGérard DepardieuJean-Pierre MarielleAnne BrochetThe story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, fierce and somber man, grand master of the viola da gamba and professor of Marin Marais, prestigious musician in the court of Louis XIV.
- DirectorBruno BozzettoStarsMaurizio NichettiMaurizio MicheliMarialuisa GiovanniniAn enthusiastic filmmaker thinks he's come up with a totally original idea: animation set to classical music! When he is informed that some American named "Prisney" (or something) has already done it, he decides to do his own version, using an orchestra comprising mostly old ladies and an animator he's kept locked in a dungeon. Several different classical pieces are animated, while the animator plots his escape.
- DirectorPeter KahaneStarsKurt NaumannRita FeldmeierJudith RichterThe architect Daniel Brenner is in his late thirties when he receives his first challenging and lucrative commission: to design a cultural center for a satellite town in East-Berlin. He accepts the offer under the condition that he gets to choose who he works with. This way, he reunites with former colleagues and friends - most of them architects or students of architecture who have since chosen a different profession due to personal restraint or economic confinement. Together, they develop a concept which they hope will be more appealing to the public than the conventional and dull constructions common to the German Democratic Republic. However, their ambitious plans are once and again foiled by their conservative supervisors. As frustration grows, Daniel has trouble keeping his career in balance with his family-life: his wife Wanda wants to leave for West-Germany.
- DirectorKay PollakStarsMichael NyqvistFrida HallgrenHelen SjöholmA famous international conductor returns to his small childhood town in Sweden for early retirement. He's asked to help with the church choir. He affects the lives of all in the choir.
- DirectorBahram BeyzaieStarsSusan TaslimiParviz PoorhosseiniAdnan AfravianAn Iranian boy is lost after fleeing home for his life; his family has been killed during the Iran-Iraq war. He's saved and trained by a middle-aged woman.
- DirectorFabio CarpiStarsHéctor AlterioOmero AntonuttiPierre MaletThe internationally renowned string quartet had been performing together for most of their adult lives when their lead violinist suddenly died, leaving the remaining three confused about their lives and careers.
- DirectorSamira MakhmalbafStarsSaid MohamadiBehnaz JafariBahman GhobadiItinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
- DirectorJulie GavrasStarsNina Kervel-BeyJulie DepardieuStefano AccorsiA 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.
- DirectorSilvio SoldiniStarsLicia MagliettaBruno GanzGiuseppe BattistonAfter being forgotten in a highway café during a bus trip, a housewife decides to start a new life by herself in Venice.
- DirectorFrançois TruffautStarsJeanne MoreauJean-Claude BrialyMichel BouquetJulie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?
- DirectorSusanne BierStarsUlrich ThomsenNikolaj Lie KaasConnie NielsenTwo brothers must negotiate changing roles and shifting family dynamics when one is sent to war in Afghanistan.
- DirectorMorten TyldumStarsNicolai Cleve BrochAksel HennieAnders BaasmoKristoffer is a billboard hanger, 24 years old and carefree. When his girlfriend Elisabeth dumps him for the boss of her trend bureau, his life falls into pieces. He feels like a loser. By coincidence some of Kristoffer's video diaries end up with the producer of the popular talk show "Karsten Tonight" in TV2. A few weeks later Kristoffer's life has become TV entertainment. People love the sequences from his commune at Tøyen: Kristoffer's half-twisted view of his surroundings, his crazy best friend Geir, not to mention the weird web designer Stig Inge, who hasn't set foot outside the Tøyen shopping center for two years. Kristoffer's future again looks bright, everyone likes him, but revealing your life on national television comes with a price tag. As Kristoffer's future in the TV business looks brighter and brighter, his friends start suffering. Geir's big secret is revealed, and Stig Inge's personal problems are much more serious than Kristoffer first thought. It will cost him a great deal to win his friends back. Kristoffer knows what he wants, but does he have enough guts to follow his heart?
- DirectorJosé Luis CuerdaStarsManuel LozanoFernando Fernán GómezUxía BlancoBased in 1936 Spain, Moncho is an outcast at school but is able to form a strong bond with his outspoken teacher. When fascism arrives to Spain, his teacher is considered an enemy of the regime & arrested.
- DirectorJean-Marc ValléeStarsMichel CôtéMarc-André GrondinDanielle ProulxA young French Canadian, one of five boys in a conservative family in the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to reconcile his emerging identity with his father's values.
- DirectorCristian NemescuStarsArmand AssanteJamie ElmanRazvan VasilescuA railway chief delays a NATO train transporting military equipment during the war in Kosovo in 1999.
- DirectorAmin MatalqaStarsNadim SawalhaRana SultanHussein Al-SousWhen an old airport janitor finds a captain's hat in the trash, he gets pulled into the lives of children in his poor neighborhood. He weaves imaginary stories of his world adventures to offer hope in the face of their harsh reality.
- DirectorGaston BirabenStarsBárbara LombardoSusana CamposHugo AranaCristina's life is thrown into turmoil when she is suddenly escorted from her strict Catholic school in Buenos Aires and told that she is really Sofía Lombardi, the daughter of activists who disappeared in the '70s. Questioning everything she once thought true, Cristina embarks on a journey to find her true identity. Meeting others like herself, the young girl soon discovers the real-life horrors of Argentina's relatively recent past and the nightmare that claimed tens of thousands of lives during the country's "dirty war."
- DirectorVittorio De SicaStarsEmilio CigoliLuciano De AmbrosisIsa PolaFour-year-old Pricò becomes the subject of emotional folly by his capricious parents and negligent relatives.
- DirectorFriðrik Þór FriðrikssonStarsMasatoshi NagaseLili TaylorFisher StevensA Japanese businessman travels to Iceland and has a series of misadventures while venturing to a remote area to perform a traditional burial ritual where his parents died several years back.
- DirectorMajid MajidiStarsHossein MahjoubMohsen RamezaniSalameh FeyziThe story of Mohammed, a blind Iranian boy and his father, Hashem, who is always oscillating between accepting his son as he is and abandoning him, as he represents a burden for him, after the loss of his wife.
- DirectorDariush MehrjuiStarsEzzatolah EntezamiMahin ShahabiAli NasirianAn old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.
- DirectorAleksandr RogozhkinStarsAnni-Kristiina JuusoVille HaapasaloViktor BychkovIn World War II, a Finnish sniper is left chained to a rock by German soldiers, while a captain of the Red Army, en route to his court martial, is almost blown up by Russian planes. A Lapp woman gives shelter to both of them at her farm.