PARADISE: LOVE (2012 | AUSTRIA)
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Cast: Margarethe Tiesel, Peter Kazungu, Inge Maux
Runtime: 2hrs
German with English subtitles
Cannes Film Festival 2012 – Official Competition
Trailer

Paradise: Love takes places on Kenya’s beaches where European women, known as “sugar mamas”, seek out African men selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50 year-old Austrian woman, travels to this vacation paradise where she goes from one beach boy to the next, from disappointment to disappointment, until finally she realises that on the beaches of Kenya, love is a business. Paradise: Love tells of older women and young men, Europe and Africa, and the complex relationship between the exploiter and the exploited.

Explicit content, not suitable for under 18’s.

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN (2012 | BELGIUM)
Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Cast: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse
Runtime: 1hr 50min
Flemish with English subtitles
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominated, 2014
Trailer

The Broken Circle Breakdown tells of the love story between Elise and Didier. She has her own tattoo shop, he plays the banjo in a band. It is love at first sight, in spite of major differences. He talks, she listens. He is a dedicated atheist, although at the same time a naïve romantic. She has a cross tattooed in her neck, even though she has both feet firmly on the ground. Their happiness is complete after their little girl Maybelle is born. But when Maybelle becomes seriously ill, Didier and Elise respond in very different ways. The Broken Circle Breakdown is an intense melodrama, full of passion and music. A film about how love can sometimes conquer fate, and sometimes not.

THE HUNT (2012 | DENMARK)
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Susse Wold, Thomas Bo Larse
Runtime: 1hr 51min
Danish with English subtitles
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominated, 2014
Trailer

The Hunt is a disturbing depiction of how a lie becomes the truth when gossip, doubt and malice are allowed to flourish. Following a tough divorce, 40-year-old Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) has a new girlfriend, a new job and is in the process of re-establishing his relationship with his teenage son, Marcus. But things go awry. Just a passing remark. A random lie. And as the snow falls and the Christmas lights are lit, the lie spreads like a virus. The shock and mistrust gets out of hand, and the small community finds itself in a collective state of hysteria, while Lucas is wrongly accused of child abuse and fights a lonely fight for his life and dignity.

STRANGER BY THE LAKE (2013 | FRANCE)
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Cast: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick d’Assumçao
Runtime: 1hr 37min
French with English subtitles
Cannes Film Festival 2013 – Best Director Award, Un Certain Regard section
Trailer

Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot, on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel (Christophe Paou), an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love. When a death occurs, Frank and Michel become the primary suspects but they choose to ignore the dangers and instead continue to engage in their passionate and potentially lethal relationship. STRANGER BY THE LAKE is an erotic thriller that tests the lengths and limits of sexual desire.

Explicit content, not suitable for under 18’s.

BARBARA (2012 | GERMANY)
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Jasna Fritzi Bauer
Runtime: 1h 45min
German with English subtitles
Berlin International Film Festival 2012, Best Director Award
Trailer

Barbara is a simmering, impeccably crafted Cold War thriller, starring the gifted Nina Hoss as a Berlin doctor banished to a rural East German hospital as punishment for applying for an exit visa. As her lover from the West carefully plots her escape, Barbara waits patiently and avoids friendships with her colleagues – except for Andre, the hospital's head physician, who is warmly attentive to her. But even as she finds herself falling for him, Barbara still cannot be sure that Andre is not a spy. As her defensive wall slowly starts to crumble, she is eventually forced to make a profound decision about her future. Barbara paints a haunting picture of a woman being slowly crushed between the irreconcilable needs for desire and survival.

THE GREAT BEAUTY (2013 | ITALY)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli
Runtime: 2hr 22min
Italian with English subtitles
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar 2014
Trailer

Indifferent and seductive, Rome offers itself up to the astonished eyes of tourists; it is summer and the city shines with an elusive and definitive beauty. 65-year-old Jep Gambardella flirts between culture and the high life in a Rome that never ceases to be a sanctuary of wonder and greatness. The successful journalist and inveterate seducer is haunted by memories of a youthful love which he still hangs on to. Behind the decadence and decay of reality, the city continues to preserve a hidden and, sometimes, desperate beauty. Dazzlingly ambitious, beautifully filmed and thoroughly enthralling, The Great Beauty offers virtuoso filmmaking from writer/director Paolo Sorrentino.

TABU (2012 | PORTUGAL)
Director: Miguel Gomes
Cast: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira
Runtime: 1hr 50min
Berlin International Film Festival 2012 – Official Competition
Portuguese with English subtitles
Trailer

A temperamental old woman, her Cape Verdean maid and a neighbour devoted to social causes live on the same floor of a Lisbon apartment building. When the old lady dies, the other two learn of an episode from her past: a tale of love and crime set in an Africa straight from the world of adventure films. Acclaimed director Miguel Gomes returns with a sumptuous, eccentric two-part tale, moving and poetic, combined with the lush, melodious sounds of its heady, tropical setting, peppered with a soundtrack of Phil Spector songs.

CHILD’S POSE  (2012 | ROMANIA)
Director: Calin Peter Netzer
Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Natasa Raab
Runtime: 1hr 52min
Romanian with English subtitles
Berlin International Film Festival 2013, Golden Bear (Best Film)
Trailer

When Cornelia, a well-off, middle-aged architect, finds out that her son Barbu, was involved in a tragic accident, her motherly instincts take over and she uses all her skills, well-connected friends and money to save him from jail. Then she expects him to once again become the dependent child he was before. This doesn't seem to be a very difficult task, given the state of shock Barbu is in. But it is a thin line between motherly love and self-serving manipulation. A witty and engrossing blend of psychological realism and social commentary.

LIVING IS EASY WITH EYES CLOSED (2013 | SPAIN)
Cast: Javier Cámara, Natalia de Molina, Francesc Colomer
Producer: Cristina Huete
Runtime: 1hr 48min
Spanish with English Subtitles
San Sebastian International Film Festival 2013 - Official Competition
Trailer

A grammar school teacher, who uses Beatle songs to teach English in Spain in 1966, during the last years of Franco’s regime, discovers that John Lennon will be visiting Almería for a film shoot. Determined to meet him, he drives off in his quest. Along the way, he picks up a sixteen-year-old boy who has run away from home and a twenty-one-year-old girl who also seems to be running away from something. An unforgettable friendship is born.

LE WEEK-END (2013 | UNITED KINGDOM)
Director: Roger Michell
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum
Runtime: 1hr 33min
Toronto International Film Festival 2013
Trailer

Le Week-End is a beautifully observed, funny and poignant story about the nature of love and commitment where husband and wife yearn to recapture their youthful fearlessness, lack of responsibility and idealism. A married couple (Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan) revisit Paris to revitalise their marriage, and run into an old friend (Jeff Goldblum) who acts as a catalyst for things to come. Meg feels she deserves a better life, but at crucial moments we see how insecure and bereft Meg would be without her husband Nick. Le Week-End is a delicious ‘portrait of a marriage’ with all the sensitive imperfections of a life of partnership.