
Praia, Cape Verde. Laura, Flavia and Bela are childhood friends. Each leads her own life and they sometimes meet to dance, dine and have fun. But one day the calm rivers of their lives break their banks and become wild torrents: Ricardo, Flavia's husband, rapes his pupil Indira, Laura's 13-year old eldest daughter. A film that takes a critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde.


Praia, Cape Verde. Laura, Flavia and Bela are childhood friends. Each leads her own life and they sometimes meet to dance, dine and have fun. But one day the calm rivers of their lives break their banks and become wild torrents: Ricardo, Flavia's husband, rapes his pupil Indira, Laura's 13-year old eldest daughter. A film that takes a critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde.
2007-05-25
7
A critical look at the lives of women in Cape Verde
7.1Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
6.6A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.
5.8A woman leaves her seaside hometown to search for her long-lost brother, experiencing hallucinations brought on by her epilepsy during her trip.
7.1Two kids, Dylan and Kylie, run away from home on Christmas Day and spend a night of magic and terror on the streets of inner-city Dublin.
5.9Anti-Catholic and anti-cleric policies in the Mexican state of Tabasco lead the revolutionary government to persecute the state's last remaining priest.
6.4Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.
7.3In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.
6.2After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
6.0A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
7.0The film tells the story of two boys who become friends at the start of the Troubles in 1970. The boys share an obsession with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with the consequence that they run away to Australia.
6.9A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
7.2As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.
7.2Twin sisters secretly swap places on their thirtieth birthday. The harmless prank becomes a nightmare when one of them is murdered.
6.2While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
7.3The sierras of southern Brazil, 1963. The son of an French man and a Brazilian woman, Tony is a young man with a profound love of cinema and poetry. After graduating from college he returns to his small town in rural Brazil, to find out that his father had left for good, back to France. Tony then looks for the company of his fathers friends in search of information and references of a lost male role-model. He becomes a school teacher and a male figure to kids, in an attempt to provide them with something he lacks himself. A series of developments lead him to a surprising final lead on his fathers' whereabouts and reasons for leaving.
6.4Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.
5.9A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer.
6.2Two law school friends find themselves at odds when one becomes a Justice Department lawyer and the other goes into politics.
0.0Nasa, a successful 31-year-old, faces a life-altering challenge when her doctor advises conceiving soon after a myomectomy. Pressured by her biological clock, she proposes an unconventional solution to her best friend Mofe: fathering her child through IVF. Their tight-knit friendship is tested as they navigate this complex journey. When IVF fails, they resort to natural conception, blurring the lines between friendship and intimacy. As Nasa finally becomes pregnant, unexpected emotions surface, threatening their bond. Caught between the joy of impending parenthood and the fear of losing their most treasured relationship, Nasa and Mofe must confront their true feelings. They're forced to redefine their connection and face the possibility that their friendship might evolve into something more – or be lost forever. "BABY MAKER" is a poignant exploration of modern relationships, societal pressures, and the transformative power of parenthood.
6.0In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
5.9Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.
6.1On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.
6.3A failed track coach finally finds someone who he believes has what it takes to win. The Comrades Marathon is a 90-k race in South Africa. An aging running coach, Barry, wants to field a winner; he's working with four men from a factory, but when he's fired to make way for a smooth, corporate type, he's at loose ends. Then he sees Christine, a Namibian immigrant who runs to forget her troubles. He offers to coach her and soon she's living at his house, following his diet and training regimen. But his single-mindedness gets to her: she wants a job and a place of her own. Plus, the man who replaced Barry likes her and wants her away from Barry. Can runner and coach (woman and man, African and European) sort out their complex relationship before the race? Written by
6.1Detective John Shaft travels incognito to Ethiopia, then France, to bust a human trafficking ring.
4.1Bizet's Carmen gets a modern adaptation. Seducting, provocating, sensual. All the ingredients for a perfect drama. With her charm, Karmen gets out of many situations.
7.2Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
7.7An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.
4.1Rick Morgan, an American engineer who runs a mine in East Africa, is approached one day by his friend Jim Scott, who needs someplace to store canisters of toxic waste. Unfortunately, a spill occurs a short time later, resulting in deaths and Morgan having to leave the country. A year later, he is approached by a government agent looking for a missing supply of potentially hazardous poison, which in truth hides something even more valuable.
7.6An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son, conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.
6.7Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.
7.4Young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan decides it's time for an adventure after he finishes his formal education, so he decides to try his luck in Uganda, and arrives during the downfall of President Obote. General Idi Amin comes to power and asks Garrigan to become his personal doctor.
6.0A couple sets up an African game preserve, only to have British and Italian armies fight over the waterholes.
6.2On her first visit to East Africa, a young woman crosses paths with the Ranger charged with being her guide. They have something in common and when they meet, a light within them both begins to flicker.
7.4At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.
7.1Two brothers are divided by marriage and fate during the 100 horrifying days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
6.0It tells the story of a boy Kumasenu who moves to the city of Accra from a small fishing village, encouraged by his cousin Agboh's exaggerated tales of the wonders of city life. Hungry, he steals bread and is caught by police, but is rescued by a doctor and his wife who find him work. Agboh attempts to get Kumasenu to rob the doctor, but Kumasenu foils his cousin's plans.
6.7A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.