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Being Maria (French)
Maria Schneider is a promising, young French actress. When she gets the lead in a feature film directed by an acclaimed Italian filmmaker and starring one of America's most beloved actors, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Her collaborators, director Bernardo Bertolucci and star Marlon Brando seem to be bringing out the best in Maria, sharing a warm rapport and mentorship with the 19-year-old girl. Until one day, when the two men conspire to shoot a crucial sex scene as a harrowing assault without letting Maria in on the plan. The film goes on to be lauded as a fearless artistic breakthrough, but for Maria, it's the beginning of a living hell.
Director: Jessica Palud
Starring: Anamaria Vartolomei, Matt Dillon, Yvan Attal, Giuseppe Maggio
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Close Your Eyes (Spanish)
A Spanish actor disappears during the filming of a movie. Although his body is never found, the police conclude that he has suffered an accident at the edge of a cliff. Many years later, the mystery returns to the present day.
Director: Victor Erice
Starring: Manolo Solo, Jose Coronado, Ana Torrent, Petra Martinez
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Hukkle (Hungarian)
There is something dark and mysterious occurring in a small Hungarian village, but exactly what that is remains a secret, barely perceptible among the rhythms of everyday life. A youth drives the milk cart and spies a young woman sunbathing. An old woman plows her field, and a farmer's sow is fertilized. But there is also a strange ritual that involves the villagers and the mailman, who presents items to every new widow when her husband dies something that happens with regular frequency.
Director: György Pálfi
Starring: Ferenc Bandi, Józsefné Rácz, Ferenc Nagy, Eszter Ónodi, József Farkas
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In The Moscow Slums (Russian)
A tremendously entertaining historical detective mystery adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of Four" but in place of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the film features two real-life figures from Russian history: famed theater director Konstantin Stanislavski and journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky investigating a baffling occult murder mystery
Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Starring: Anfisa Chernykh, Konstantin Kryukov, Mikhail Porechenkov
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Jean De Florette / Manon Of The Spring: Two Films by Claude Berri - Criterion Collection (French)
A sprawling tale of greed, betrayal, and revenge plays out amid the bucolic splendor of the French countryside in Claude Berri's masterly two-film adaptation of a literary work by the legendary Marcel Pagnol. Spanning three generations in the lives of two families, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring vividly recreate the provincial world of an early-twentieth-century village, where an outsider's arrival sets in motion a devastating chain of events. Jean de Florette: A greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell. Manon of the Spring: A beautiful but shy shepherdess plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her father's land caused his death years earlier.
Director: Claude Berri
Starring: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Beart, Gérard Depardieu
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Men of Deeds (Romanian)
A middle-aged police chief goes on with his job and modest life in a small town, dreaming of having an orchard, managing regular drunken conflicts at the local bar and largely ignoring the mayor's questionable deeds and the dubious things that happen in the village. But when a man is murdered, he jumps to the other extreme, trying to be what he has never been before: the justice seeker who arrests everyone guilty.
Director: Paul Negoescu
Starring: Iulian Postelnicu, Vasile Muraru, Daniel Busuioc, Crina Semciuc, Oana Tudor, Anghel Damian
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Radio Dreams (Persian)
A brilliant and misunderstood Iranian writer struggles to pursue his ambitious goal of bringing together Metallica and Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan's first rock band.
Director: Babak Jalali
Starring: Lars Ulrich, Boshra Dastournezhad, Bella Warda
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School's Out (French)
In this dread-soaked cerebral thriller from filmmaker Sébastien Marnier, a teacher throws himself from a classroom window before the terrified eyes of his students. Despite the tragedy, six of them remain oddly cool and unemotional. Pierre, the new substitute teacher, notices the hostile, strangely violent behavior of this close-knit clique. Precocious and unusually smart, the six teens seem to be up to something.... Pierre becomes obsessed and is quickly in over his head as he's sucked into their dark vision of a doomed future. Includes forced English subtitles.
Director: Sebastien Marnier
Starring: Laurent Lafitte, Emmanuelle Bercot, Luana Bajrami, Victor Bonnel, Pascal Greggory
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Sleep (German)
Tormented by recurring nightmares of a place where she has never been, Marlene cannot help but investigate when she discovers the place is real. Once there, she suffers a breakdown and is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Determined to discover what happened to her, Mona, her daughter, follows and finds herself in Stainbach, an idyllic village with a dark history. What is it that so tormented her mother, and the people of Stainbach? What is the source of the nightmares she suffers? And who is the mysterious Trude that lives in the forest?
Director: Michael Venus
Starring: Gro Swantje Kohlhof, Sandra Hüller
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Stay Online (Ukrainian)
A young woman volunteering in Kyiv is given one of the thousands of laptops donated by ordinary Ukrainians to support the war effort. The woman receives a mysterious video call from a young boy searching for his father, the laptop's previous owner, who went missing during the Russian army's invasion. Reluctantly, she agrees to help find his missing parents a decision that will ultimately force her to risk the lives of her own loved ones.
Director: Yeva Strielnikova
Starring: Oleksandr Rudynskyi, Hordi Dziubynskyi, Olesia Zhurakivska, Ekaterina Kisten, Anton Skrypets
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Sweet Dreams (Dutch)
A sharp-eyed satire set on a sugar plantation on an Indonesian island in the final years of the Dutch colonial era, Ena Sendijarević's second feature is a potent reminder that European colonialism did not come to a tidy ending in the innumerable countries it affected (to say nothing of the neocolonialism still impacting much of the globe). Instead, Sweet Dreams provides compelling evidence of the mess these wider historical forces make in the lives of the characters within the volatile microcosm the director portrays so vividly. For the family and business led by the imperious patriarch Jan (Hans Dagelet), the rot had clearly set in long before these events. That said, Jan isn't around to see the changes to come, what with his sudden death after one of his nightly visits to the room of Siti, his Indonesian housekeeper. With the disorder in the household further compounded by a workers' protest, his widow Agathe demands the return from Europe of Jan's pompous son Cornelius and heavily pregnant daughter-in-law Josefin. When they all learn of Jan's decision to bequeath his estate to his son with Siti, the ensuing power struggles add a further degree of turbulence. Realizing the promise she displayed in her first feature Take Me Somewhere Nice, Sendijarević delivers a film that's remarkable for its ruthless intelligence, visual flair, and astute take on the ways personal relationships can be poisoned by the systems and structures in which we operate. Includes Indonesian dialogue.
Director: Ena Sendijarevic
Starring: Hans Dagelet, Hayati Azis, Renee Soutendijk, Florian Myjer, Lisa Zweerman
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Seed of the Sacred Fig (Persian)
In Tehran, the exemplary family of an investigating judge is tested by the dramatic events following a young woman's death in police custody.
Director: Mohammad Rasoulof
Starring: Misagh Zare, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki
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Viet & Nam (Vietnamese)
Viet and Nam, a visually stunning journey chronicles the passionate love affair of two miners. Desire and their undying commitment to one another unfurl in this romantic and erotic tale of choices they must make to stay together.
Director: Minh Quy Truong
Starring: Thanh Hai Pham, Duy Bao Dinh Dao, Thi Nga Nguyen
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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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