Browse Movies : 2003 : Foreign

Newly commissioned SS Lieutenant and respected civilian chemist, Kurt Gerstein, discovers that the Zyklon B pellets he has developed to disinfect soldiers' drinking water are being used to gas interred Jews by the thousands. Recruited to help streamline the death camp process by a team of SS officers, Gerstein secretly approaches the Swedish Consulate, the German Protestant community and finally Vatican representatives in the hopes of exposing this unspeakable crime. The only one who listens is Father Ricardo, a young Jesuit priest with deep family connections at the Vatican. Ricardo promises Gerstein he will alert the Pope to the Jewish genocide in hopes that the pontiff will reveal and denounce the Final Solution to the Christian world...

The 1970s was an extraordinary time of rebellion, of questioning every accepted idea: political activism, hedonism, protests, the sexual revolution, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the music revolution, rage and liberation. Every standard by which we set our social and cultural clocks was either turned inside out or thrown away completely and reinvented. For American cinema, the 1970s was an era during which a new generation of filmmakers created work for a new kind of audience--moviegoers who were hungry for stories that reflected their own experiences and who were turning their backs on aged old studio formulas. As a result, emerging filmmakers influenced by foreign directors such as Godard, Kurasowa and Fellini coupled with the social climate and a struggling studio system, converged to create a new kind of moviemaking. Through their choice of material, filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonovich, William Friedkin, Roger Corman and Paul Schrader revolutionized mainstream movies and for the first time personal visions were coming out of the studio system.

A young Frenchman moves into an apartment full of international students in Barcelona and discovers that mixing with students of many nationalities gives him a new perspective on life.

Set during the final days of the war between Iran and Iraq, this is the story of an elderly Iranian Kurd musician who ventures off with his two sons, also musicians, into the dangerous territory of Kurdish Iraq in search of his wife, Hanareh, a singer with an amazing voice, who they fear may be in danger there, after she ran away with the old man's best friend.

Winner of the Jury Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and the Official Russian Selection for Academy Award® Best Foreign Language Film, "House of Fools" (Dom Durakov) is a satirical look at war seen through the eyes of a beautiful woman who is literally madly in love. Based on a true story, "House of Fools" tells the tale of a young Chechen woman, Janna, who is one of several inmates living in a psychiatric hospital on the Russian border of Chechnya. Insulated from the world, the inmates are oblivious to the war that rages around them. In her dream world, Janna finds comfort when her imaginary fiancé (Bryan Adams, played by himself) sings her love songs.

Rising young artist Angelique (Audrey Tautou) lives in a candy-colored fantasy world. From the moment she flashes her smile and persuades a flower shop owner to deliver a surprise single rose to her lover Loic (Samuel Le Bihan), the world has – again – fallen under her spell. In the glorious throes of true love, Angelique is happily planning her future: a career as a painter and a future with Loic… what more could she desire? But things are rarely as they seem and Loic, a married cardiologist, has a slightly more jaded take on their affair…

A love story spanning two continents, "Nowhere in Africa" is the extraordinary true tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler) and their five-year-old daughter Regina each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country-learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm's cook. As the war rages on the other side of the world, the trio's relationships to their strange environment become increasingly complicated as Jettel grows more self-assured and Walter more haunted by the life they left behind. As they eventually learn to cherish their life in Africa, they also endeavor to find a way back to each other.

At a deserted train station, a teacher and a gangster meet and realize that each might have been better suited to the other man's way of life. As a friendship of sorts develops between these opposite personalities, each starts to envy the other and by the week's end, everything will change for both of them.

Nominated for two Cesar awards in 2002, including Best First Feature Film, "The Girl From Paris" tells the story of Sandrine, a young Parisienne who decides to leave the city and pursue her dream of becoming a farmer. Adrien is the older, taciturn farmer who agrees to sell Sandrine his land and herd of goats before retiring to Grenoble. Sandrine allows Adrien stay at the farm for eighteen months, then begins renovations in earnest. Sandrine succeeds where Adrien was sure she would fail; she earns a living in the spring and summer by opening up the farm to tourists and selling goat cheese over the Internet. But the arrival of winter brings a tide change and conflicting emotions: Sandrine faces the harsh isolation of the Rhone-Alps while forming a growing attachment to Adrien. Between their mutual curiosity and misunderstandings, Sandrine and Adrien are forced to live side by side when the only thing they share is their love for mountains and nature.

Genya Tachibana is a director and the president of a small production company. One day, he is contacted by the famous Gin Ei studios, that ask him to direct a documentary commemorating their 70 years of existence. Genya chooses as a subject the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, a superstar actress who 30 years earlier chose to end her career and disappear from public life. Chiyoko Fujiwara is a cinematographic enigma that nobody ever seemed to shed light on. Genya is obsessed by this fallen star, wanting to unravel the truth behind her secret. Accompanied by a young cameraman, Genya finds his way to Chiyoko, who has transformed into an elderly hermit living alone in an isolated house. At their first meeting, Genya sees that Chiyoko, although touched by the hand of time, has not lost any of her charm or energy. To gain her confidence, he brings her an ancient key that holds sentimental value, that rapidly allows Chiyoko to begin recounting her memories. The interview takes course, and our 3 protagonists are plunged into the past, visiting each fragment of what has been long gone, where the past and present meld together. The actress' recollections soon metamorphosize into a great adventure where cinema confronts her history and an incredible love is unveiled, that conflicted with her rather uncommon lifestyle...

After it is killed in a bullfight, a bull's body parts are transported across Europe, in Spain, France, Italy and Belgium, with this ensemble drama showing us the people who are the recipients of the remains in one way or another, like an Italian actress (Chiara Mastroianni) selling the bones in a supermarket promotion, a Spanish woman (Angela Molina) who dines on its steaks, a little girl (Raphaelle Molinier) in northern France who imagines a world where animals are much larger than humans, and a taxidermist (Jacques Gamblin) whose wife is simultaneously giving birth to quintuplets.

When her majesty's crown jewels are stolen by a conniving Frenchman (John Malkovich), who also plans to steal the queen's throne, Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson), a bit unseasoned but intensely enthusiastic, is thrown onto the case. Fast cars, high tech gadgets, top secret info - Johnny can hardly believe it. He may be in over his head, but his courage and dedication are unmatched - especially after he meets double agent Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia) and discovers that falling in love makes saving the nation even more exciting.

This film tells the stories of the locals living in a resort town in northern France so renowned for its pebble-covered beach that the central character, Marie (Helene Fillieres), works at a pebble processing factory. As the town changes seasonally from being completely empty in the winter and crowded during the summer, the working class lives of the locals whose livelihoods depend upon the money spent while others have a great time on vacation go on...

After his wife leaves him, a man (Jean-Pierre Bacri) hires an unqualified but lovely suburban girl to clean his Paris apartment. The two become close as they chat while she's working, but can the lonely older guy sweep her off her feet?

Set in an unnamed country in a post-apocalyptic future, this is the story of a young female assassin, Yuki (Yumiko Shaku), who discovers that the leader of the band of outlaws she belongs to murdered her mother. Finding herself targeted for elimination after she confronts the group's leader about her mother's death, Yuki goes on the run from her former coworkers. Barely surviving an attack, she finds refuge with a young man who used to be a terrorist, with whom she gradually falls in love, but with trained killers getting closer and closer to finding her, can their love survive?

Set in a small Edo period Japanese brothel near Tokyo, this is the story of a young samurai, Fusanosuke (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who seeks refuge there in the company of a young prostitute, Oshin (Nagiko Tono), after he accidentally wounded a powerful samurai during an argument whose colleagues are now seeking to kill Fusanosuke in return. Soon falling in love with Oshin, Fusanosuke hopes to be able to cleanse her from the sins of her occupation so that she may be his wife, even as danger lurks all around the brothel.

This is the true story of how a Japanese businessman from Los Angeles, Eishy Hayata, built an emerald mining empire in Columbia that is today one of the world's largest and most powerful, starting in the 1970s as an "esmeraldero", an emerald buyer who goes directly to rural areas where emeralds can be procured from locals at bargain prices in their rough form. Central to the film's intrigue are Columbia's more brutal realities, as guerrilla warfare and street kidnappings are quite common. To combat this, Hayata fashions himself as a sort of modern cowboy, armed and dressed to fit the bill, along with a powerful cadre of personal bodyguards.

After accidentally causing the death of her mother (Mariella Valentini), a young lesbian, Lenni (Regina Orioli), runs away with her auto mechanic girlfriend, Stella (Maya Sansa), with the mom's body in the trunk of their car and a gang of crazies on their tail.

Shortly after both his brother died and his girlfriend left him, Bruce (Rodolphe Marconi), a young filmmaker attending a year-long seminar in Rome, finds himself becoming the subject of obssession by a mostly straight Italian tour guide, Matteo (Andrea Necci), after the two end up sleeping together. Matteo continues to hang around Bruce, sometimes lurking in the darkness, stalking him, even as a new American girl (Echo Danon) with a fascination with serial killers enters their lives.

Legendary criminal. Proud homosexual. Cabaret star. Passionate lover. Killer. Devoted father of seven adopted children. Saint or devil? Madame Satã. Born to slaves in the arid wasteland of Northern Brazil and sold by his mother at the age of 7, he pursued his freedom on the mean streets of Lapa, Rio de Janeiro. Jet-black, six feet tall, 180 pounds of proud muscle in a silk shirt and tight pants, a cutthroat razor in his back pocket. Karim Aïnouz's extraordinary portrait of the triumphs and tragedy of this explosive and paradoxical personality unfolds against the vibrant, sordid background of Lapa: thronging underworld of pimps and whores, of cut-throats, queers and artists, of dark bars and brothels thick with smoke, drenched in sweat and cheap perfume. A world run through with violence and raw desire, where desperate dreams spring from poverty and squalor.