Kym is a recovering drug addict who leaves rehab behind to attend the wedding of her sister, Rachel, but Kym's problems follow her home. Rachel cannot forgive or forget Kym's many drug-fuelled transgressions, and their father dotes on his returned daughter. As the wedding grows closer, the spotlight shifts from Rachel to Kym, much to the bride's irritation.
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Anna Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Mather Zickel, Anisa George
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Scriptwritter: Jenny Lumet
Producer: Neda Armian, Marc Platt
In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister, himself. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance. Numerous battles of strength and wit ensued, both on land and on water, eventually culminating in the battle of Red Cliff. During the battle, two thousand ships were burned, and the course of Chinese history was changed forever.
Cast: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Chen Chang, Fengyi Zhang, Wei Zhao, Takeshi Kaneshiro un citi
Directed by John Woo
From all outward appearances, Pippa Lee (ROBIN WRIGHT PENN) leads a charmed existence. An anchor of feminine serenity, she is the devoted wife of an accomplished publisher (ALAN ARKIN) thirty years her senior, the proud mother of two grown children, and a trusted friend and confidant to all who cross her path. But as Pippa dutifully follows her husband to a new life in a staid Connecticut retirement community, her idyllic world and the persona she has built over the course of her marriage will be put to the ultimate test.
In truth, the gracious woman of the present day has seen more than her fair share of turmoil in her past - an array of erotic misadventures, a diet-pill-addicted mother and the suicide of an exotic rival - until finding love and security in a family of her own. Embarking on a bittersweet journey of self-discovery, along with help from a new, strange and soulful acquaintance (KEANU REEVES), Pippa must now confront both her volatile past and the hidden undercurrents of her seemingly placid world to find the true sense of self which has always eluded her.
Cast: Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin, Keanu Reeves, Monica Bellucci, Blake Lively, Maria Bello, Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder
Directed by Rebecca Miller
Script: Rebecca Miller
Producer: Brad Pitt
A sequence of four (in the television version – five) independent stories with their independent characters, forming a coherent narrative. In its form the film is like a theatre performance with a final bow taken by all the participants. Long-forgotten “un-splintered” monologues allow the actors to put on show their acting skills, without hiding them behind special effects and dynamical montage. Unlike anything, this is original dramatic art. The film tries to drive the spectator into frenzy. It is a protest that is vital in an era of total crisis, a cry from the heart which paradoxically gives us hope that this is not yet the end, but only a crack in the system, a liberation from stereotypes, templates and chains.
– Closing film of the Russian Film Festival "Kinotavr", Sochi, 2009.
Cast: Mikhail Efremov, Alexander Strizhenov, Victor Sukhorukov, Evgeni Stychkin,
Pavel Derevianko, Yuri Kolokolnikov,
Directed by Grigori Konstantinopolsky
Script: Grigori Konstantinopolsky
Producer: Grigori Konstantinopolsky, Andrei Novikov
Oscar® winner Russell Crowe leads an all-star cast in a blistering thriller about a rising congressman and an investigative journalist embroiled in an case of seemingly unrelated, brutal murders. Crowe plays D.C. reporter Cal McCaffrey, whose street smarts lead him to untangle a mystery of murder and collusion among some of the nation’s most promising political and corporate figures in State of Play, from acclaimed director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland).
Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party’s contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out.
McCaffrey has the dubious fortune of both an old friendship with Collins and a ruthless editor, Cameron (Oscar® winner Helen Mirren), who has assigned him to investigate. As he and partner Della (Rachel McAdams) try to uncover the killer’s identity, McCaffrey steps into a cover-up that threatens to shake the nation’s power structures. And in a town of spin-doctors and wealthy politicos, he will discover one truth: when billions are at stake, no one’s integrity, love or life is ever safe.
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman, Robin Wright-Penn and Helen Mirren
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald
Adapted from the revealing novel by Richard Yates, "Revolutionary Road" is an incisive portrait of an American marriage seen through the eyes of Frank (three-time Academy Award® nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (five-time Academy Award® nominee Kate Winslet) Wheeler. Yates’ story of 1950’s America poses a question that has been reverberating through modern relationships ever since: can two people break away from the ordinary without breaking apart?
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Shannon, Zoe Kazan, David Harbour
Directed by: Sam Mendes
This is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.
The story told is a test of love, and patience. It shows that love knows no boundaries and transcends time and death.
Actors: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana, Arliss Howard, Ron Livingston, Stephen Tobolowsky
Director: Robert Schwentke
Academy Award® nominee Will Smith reunites with the director and producers of The Pursuit of Happyness for the emotional drama Seven Pounds. In the film, Smith plays Ben Thomas, an IRS agent with a fateful secret who embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers
Cast: Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Michael Ealy, Barry Pepper, Woody Harrelson
Director: Gabriele Muccino
Scriptwritter: Grant Nieporte
Producer: David Crockett
Taking Woodstock is the new film from Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee - and it’s a trip! Based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, the comedy stars Demetri Martin as Elliot, who inadvertently played a role in making 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Featuring a standout ensemble cast, and songs from a score of ’60s musical icons Taking Woodstock is a joyous voyage to a moment in time when everything seemed possible.
Working as an interior designer in Greenwich Village, Elliot is still staked to the family business - a dumpy Catskills motel called the El Monaco that is being run into the ground by his overbearing parents. In the summer of 1969, Elliot has to move back upstate to the El Monaco in order to help save the motel from being taken over by the bank.
Upon hearing that a planned music and arts festival has lost its permit from the neighboring town of Wallkill, NY, Elliot calls producer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) at Woodstock Ventures to offer his family’s motel to the promoters and generate some much-needed business. Elliot also introduces Lang to his neighbor Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who operates a 600-acre dairy farm down the road.
Soon the Woodstock staff is moving into the El Monaco - and half a million people are on their way to Yasgur’s farm for “3 days of Peace & Music in White Lake.” With a little help from his friends and with a little opposition from townspeople Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life - and popular culture - forever.
Cast: Demetri Martin, Dan Fogler, Henry Goodman, Jonathan Groff, Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber
Directed by Ang Lee
Script: James Schamus, Elliot Tiber, Tom Monte
Producer: Ang Lee, James Schamus
Tokyo is a city of transitions in three short films. A young woman who finds her life useless experiences a metamorphosis. A disheveled Caucasian emerges from a manhole to face arrest, trial, and execution; he calls himself "Merde" and speaks a language only his look-alike attorney understands. Is he human? A recluse experiences human contact when a pizza-delivery girl faints at his door during an earthquake. He conquers fear to seek her out. A chair, a corpse, a hermit: sources of urban connection?
Cast: Yû Aoi, YosiYosi Arakawa, Jean-François Balmer, Julie Dreyfus, Ayako Fujitani, Ayumi Ito, Teruyuki Kagawa, Denis Lavant, Yutaka Matsushige, Nao Omori, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
Directed by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Script by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Producer: Anne Pernod-Sawada, Masa Sawada, Michiko Yoshitake
The opening film of VII Russian Film Festival.
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In 1565, Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of Russia suffers a defeat in the long war against Poland. Around him, he can see only treachery. To struggle against the traitors, he creates a personal guard, the “Tsar’s Dogs”, whose sign of recognition is a dog’s head attached to their saddles. The Tsar’s Dogs plunge Russia into a blood bath. In alarm, the Metropolitan, the Head of the Russian Church, takes refuge in a monastery. Ivan the Terrible, believing that he can understand and interpret the signs, sees the Last Judgment approaching. So he sends for Metropolitan Philip, his childhood friend, the Superior of the monastery on the Solovki Islands. The latter, attempting to save the innocent from the Tsar’s cruelty, fights increasingly against the Tsar’s power. There is thus a clash between two violently and diametrically opposite visions of the world, smashing morality and justice, God and men.
Cannes Film Festival, 2009 – Official Selection – Un Certain Regard;
Moscow IFF, 2009 – “Opening Film”
Cast: Pyotr Mamonov, Oleg Yankovsky, Yury Kuznetsov, Ramilya Iskander, Aleksandr Domogarov, Ivan Okhlobystin, Alexei Frandetti, Alexei Makarov, Nastia Dontsova, Ville Haapasalo
Directed by Pavel Lungin
Script: Alexei Ivanov, Pavel Lungin
Producer: Pavel Lungin
Angelina lives in the Far East in a big city on the coast of the warm sea. Working with difficult children, Gelia wants to break with her loneliness: she simply needs to find happiness and, at last, start her own family. But have you ever seen that life is all that simple?
– The “Certain Regard” programme in Cannes in 2009;
– Award for Best Actor (Boris Kamorzin) – ORFF “Kinotavr”, Sochi, 2009.
Cast: Alisa Khazanova, Boris Kamorzin, Yuri Safarov, Dmitri Podnozov
Directed by Nikolai Khomeriki
Script: Alexander Rodionov, Nikolai Khomeriki
Producer: Roman Borisevich, Alexander Kushaev