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A Man & a Woman - Criterion Collection (French)
Claude Lelouch's Academy Award-winning international sensation is a paragon of swooning cinematic romanticism and 1960s chic. Against the rain-swept backdrop of the Normandy coast, two widowed single parents race-car driver Jean-Louis and film-script supervisor Anne find themselves falling for each other. But are they ready to move on from the shadows of their former lovers? Reveling in its stars' chemistry and unfolding as a sublime swirl of shifting film stocks, whirling camera work, and time- and space-collapsing editing all set to Francis Lai's unforgettable score A Man and a Woman endures as one of the most intoxicating love stories ever told.
Director: Claude Lelouch
Starring: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, Valérie Lagrange, Simone Paris
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Carissa (Afrikaans)
A young woman who dreams of leaving small village life to live in the city breaks away from her grandmother's home only to be drawn into the care of her grandfather's mountain rooibos plantation.
Director: Jason Jacobs, Devon Delmar
Starring: Gretchen Ramsden, Woudine Dirkse, Wilhelmiena Hesselman
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Little Amelie or the Character of Rain (French)
For the first years of her life, Amélie never made a sound. But when her grandmother visits and offers a miraculous bite of chocolate, Amélie suddenly awakens to all the world's wonders. As she explores her home in post-war Japan, Amélie forms a close bond with her family's housekeeper, Nishio-san, and discovers new delights in every flower petal, koi pond, and raindrop.
Director: Liane-Cho Han Jin Kuang, Maïlys Vallade
Starring: Loïse Charpentier, Victoria Grosbois, Yumi Fujimori, Cathy Cerda, Marc Arnaud
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Mercy for None (Korean)
Nam Gi Jun was once a key member of the Bongsan Gang, led by Koo Bong San. He fought through bloody turf wars, helping the gang rise to power. But everything changed when his younger brother, Nam Gi Seok, joined their rival gang, Joowoon, under Lee Ju Un. To protect his brother, Nam Gi Jun made a brutal choice - he left Bongsan for good, severing his left Achilles tendon as proof that he would never return. Eleven years later, he lives a quiet life, running a small drink supply business serving Bongsan-owned establishments. He has no intention of going back. But when Nam Gi Seok, now the second-in-command of Joowoon, is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Nam Gi Jun knows he can't stay away. To find the truth and take revenge, he steps back into the underworld he swore to leave behind - where old grudges still burn, power has shifted, and nothing is as it seems.
Director: Choi Sung-Eun
Starring: So Ji Sub, Huh Joon Ho, Cha Seung Won, Choo Young Woo, Gong Myung
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Resurrection - Criterion Collection (Mandarin)
With his ravishing third feature, visionary director Bi Gan takes his deepest plunge yet into the realm of pure dreamscape. In a world where humans have forsaken dreams in exchange for immortality, a dreaming monster embarks on a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across a century of cinema and to the end of time. Unfolding in five dazzlingly imagined chapters that encompass everything from silent-era expressionism to film noir to a delirious vampire love story shot in one of Bi's long takes, Resurrection is a work of breathtaking imagination in which cinema is the ultimate portal to the unconscious mind.
Director: Bi Gan
Starring: Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao, Gengxi Li, Jue Huang, Yongzhong Chen, Zhijian Zhang, Chloe Maayan
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Suspended Time (French)
As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Morgane, his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne's new girlfriend Carole. Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds. Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth. A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, Suspended Time is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.
Director: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Vincent Macaigne, Micha Lescot, Nine d'Urso, Nora Hamzawi, Maud Wyler, Dominique Reymond
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The Blade - Criterion Collection (Cantonese)
Among the boldest accomplishments of Hong Kong cinema's golden age, this uniquely visceral martial-arts movie puts a gritty new spin on the story of the one-armed swordsman, an iconic figure from the moment he was introduced by the Shaw Brothers studio in 1967. Composed in a whirlwind of immersive close-ups and fractured editing, The Blade follows the young sword-maker Ding On, who, after losing an arm in an ambush, transforms himself into a furious avenger. With its intentionally disorienting stylization and starkly brutal tone, The Blade was a rare commercial disappointment for Tsui Hark, but it has since been reclaimed as one of the director's most radical visions a tour de force of action expressionism, and a scathing reappraisal of the wuxia genre's code of masculinity, that achieves a feverish intensity.
Director: Tsui Hark
Starring: Vincent Zhao, Moses Chan, Xiong Xin-xin, Song Lei, Austin Wai, Valerie Chow, Chung Bik-Ha
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The Forbidden City (Italian)
Two very different souls intersect on the streets of Rome when the Italian son of a restaurant owner and a young Chinese girl join forces to search for their missing family members, his father and her sister. As romance sparks between them, they uncover the tragic truths linking their families to the city's criminal underworld and seek vengeance against the ruthless gangsters behind it all before they can start a new life together. In Italian and Mandarin with optional English and French subtitles.
Director: Gabriele Mainetti
Starring: Yaxi Liu, Enrico Borello, Marco Giallini, Sabrina Ferilli, Chunyu Shanshan, Luca Zingaretti
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Tiny Lights (Czech)
Based on the childhood of prize-winning director Beata Parkanová (The Word), Tiny Lights shows the impact of family turmoil on six-year-old Amálka. There's a strain in the relationship of Amalka's parents and between Amálka's mother and grandmother. Includes Slovak dialogue.
Director: Beata Parkanová
Starring: Martin Finger, Mia Banko, Veronika Zilkova
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Mercer County Library System
2751 Brunswick Pike Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 609-882-9246
https://mcl.org
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