André Wilms

  • Rithy Panh – Irradiés (2020)

    Rithy Panh2011-2020CambodiaDocumentary
    Irradiés (2020)
    Irradiés (2020)

    Quote:
    A film about people who have survived the irradiation of war and is recommended to those who believe they are immune to it. An extreme, necessary film that penetrates the eye and heart with unyielding force.Read More »

  • Philippe Garrel – Le sel des larmes AKA The Salt of Tears (2020)

    2011-2020FrancePhilippe GarrelRomance

    Quote:
    A provincial youngster who travels up to Paris to sit an entrance exam for a “grande école”. His path crosses that of a young woman and they strike up a short-lived relationship.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Juha (1999)

    1991-2000Aki KaurismäkiArthouseFinlandSilent

    Quote:
    When I heard that Aki Kaurismaki was making a silent black-and-white feature, I expected something arch and postmodernist. Yet in spite of a few flashes of mordant humor, some wonderfully spare sound effects, and a few minimalist lighting schemes that suggest 50s Hollywood, this 1999 film is a moving pastiche whose strength is its sincerity and authenticity. A fallen-woman story set in the present, featuring a farm couple and an evil playboy from the city who lures the wife away, it conveys the sort of purity and innocence associated with silent cinema storytelling, including a love of nature and animals, a taste for stark melodrama, and an emotional directness in the acting–evocative at various times of Griffith in the teens and Murnau in the 20s.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – La vie de bohème AKA The Bohemian Life (1992)

    1991-2000Aki KaurismäkiArthouseComedyFrance

    Quote:
    Based on the same 19th-century novel (Henri Murger’s Scenes de la Vie de Boheme) that inspired Puccini’s opera, the story is about three down-and-out losers doomed to penury and artistic obsession. There’s Albanian painter Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpää), playwright Marcel (Andre Wilms) and composer Schaunard (Kari Väänänen). Their problems are exactly the same: no rent or food money and the futile struggle to be recognized.Read More »

  • Aki Kaurismäki – Le Havre (2011)

    2011-2020Aki KaurismäkiComedyDramaFinland

    Synopsis:
    A dock worker in Le Havre hears a human sound inside one of the containers in port, that container which left Gabon three weeks ago and which was supposed to arrive in London five days after its departure from Gabon, which didn’t happen. The Le Havre police and French border guards find a still alive group of illegal African immigrants inside. On the sign from one of his elders, a young teen boy among the illegal immigrants manages to escape, news of which hits the local media. The first friendly face that boy, Idrissa, encounters is that of former artist now aged shoeshine Marcel Marx. Marcel decides to help Idrissa by hiding him in his house, news which slowly trickles through his community of friends – most of whom he associates with at his local bar – and neighbors, most who assist Marcel in this task.Read More »

  • François Dupeyron – Drôle d’Endroit pour une Rencontre AKA Strange Place for an Encounter (1988)

    1981-1990DramaFranceFrançois-DupeyronRomance

    Synopsis
    One evening, an attractive middle-class woman, France, is pushed out of her car by her irate husband. When her husband drives off, she insists on waiting by the side of the road, certain that he will return once he has cooled off. Whilst waiting, she meets Charles, a man of her own age, who has been struggling for the past two days to repair his car. Although initially frosty towards her, Charles finds himself drawn to France and tries to convince her that her husband has abandoned her for good. France cannot accept this and clings to the faint hope that her husband still loves her…Read More »

  • Bassek Ba Kobhio – Le grand blanc de Lambaréné AKA The Great White of Lambarene (1995)

    1991-2000African CinemaArthouseBassek Ba KobhioDramaGabon

    Cameroonian filmmaker Bassek ba Kobhio provides a fascinating revisionist perspective on Albert Schweitzer, Noble Peace Prize winner and secular saint of the colonial era.

    Like Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, this film begins to rewrite the history of colonialism from the point of view of the colonized. Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné is not, however, a facile exercise in iconoclasm but rather a deeply-felt lament for a missed opportunity, for a cross-cultural encounter between Africa and Europe which never happened.Read More »

  • Andrea Pallaoro – Hannah (2017)

    2011-2020Andrea PallaoroDramaItaly

    Intimate portrait of a woman drifting between reality and denial when she is left alone to grapple with the consequences of her husband’s imprisonment.

    Hannah is the intimate portrait of a woman’s loss of identity as she teeters between denial and reality. Left alone grappling with the consequences of her husband’s imprisonment, Hannah begins to unravel. Through the exploration of her fractured sense of identity and loss of self-control, the film investigates modern day alienation, the struggle to connect, and the dividing lines between individual identity, personal relationships, and societal pressures.Read More »

Back to top button