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Essential Filmproduktion
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An Unfinished Film 2024    star_border 7
In January 2020, director Xiaorui convinces his cast and crew to resume the shooting of a film halted a decade earlier. With the shoot almost complete, rumors regarding an illness begin to circulate. Some cast and crew manage to leave before the hotel is put on lockdown. Everyone remaining is confined to their rooms, and the director must decide whether to halt filming once more as Wuhan is shut down in the early days of a terrifying pandemic.
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Sparta 2022    star_border 7.1
Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed. Sparta is the brother film to Rimini (2022), and the conclusion of Ulrich Seidl's diptych about the inescapability of the past and the pain of finding yourself.
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Triangle of Sadness 2022    star_border 7.1
A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.
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Il Buco 2021    star_border 6.2
In August 1961, speleologists from Italy’s booming North arrive on a Calabrian plateau where time stands still. The intruders discover one of the world’s deepest caves, the Bifurto Abyss, under the gaze of an old shepherd, the only witness of the pristine territory.
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About Endlessness 2019    star_border 6.5
A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.
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Little Joe 2019    star_border 5.7
Alice, a single mother who is more dedicated to her work as a genetic engineer than to her teenage son Joe, develops a new variety of flower that is supposed to have the ability to make its owner happy thanks to its special chemical properties.
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Fanny Lye Deliver'd 2019    star_border 6.5
On an isolated English farm in 1657, Fanny lives a quiet life with her oppressive husband John and their young son. One day their life is rocked with the arrival of young couple Thomas and Rebecca who claim to have been robbed and need a place to stay. But are these strangers really who they say they are?
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Aren't You Happy? 2019    star_border 6.3
A girl roams through the city looking for a place to sleep. Along the way she meets young mothers who celebrate motherhood religiously, goes home with an abstinent existentialist for whom sex is “just another market”, and waits for the end of capitalism in a drag bar. Her attempt to write a book doesn’t make it beyond the first sentence of the second chapter, and she finds no space between art galleries, yoga studios and the beds of strangers. Instead of trying to fit in, she starts regarding her depression as a political issue.
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The Square 2017    star_border 6.8
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.
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A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence 2014    star_border 6.9
An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.
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Amour Fou 2014    star_border 6.4
Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, and when he meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance, she expresses interest in a suicide pact when she learns she has a terminal illness.
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Metéora 2013    star_border 6.3
In a monastery set on the top of sandstone pillars young monk Theodoros and nun Urania find themselves physically drawn to one and other after devoting their lives to the strict rituals and practises of the monasteries. Below them the eternal cycle of farm-life provides a strong contrast to their lives and they are forced to choose between human desire and spiritual devotion
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Trees 2013    star_border 7.4
Wrapping the audience in waves of sound, Alberi takes us on a circular journey through the Italian countryside. The marvelous natural music at the tops of the eponymous trees makes way for the rhythmic cadence of civilization—men baring axes and the natural clatter of daily life—before their unforgettable return home from the forest. The singular artistry of director Michelangelo Frammartino (Le quatro volte) is beautifully displayed in this mesmerizing homage to nature.
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Aurora 2011    star_border 5.9
A taciturn Romanian divorcee acquires a hunting rifle and initiates a killing spree.
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Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project 2010    star_border 6.3
A boy returns home from the institution where he grew up, but finds he is not welcome there. He fights to win the love of his family but ends up murdering them.
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The Four Times 2010    star_border 7.5
An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.
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Lourdes 2009    star_border 6.7
In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.
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Women Without Men 2009    star_border 6.4
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.
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Enter the Void 2009    star_border 7.3
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
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Delta 2008    star_border 5.6
A man comes home to meet his mother and sister after many years away. He finds his mother living with a new boyfriend, and his sister to be grown-up. He begins to settle down in this new place by building a new home for himself on the delta. But when his sister moves in with him and the two begin a romance, there are tragic consequences.
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