The 2017 biographical film “A Prayer Before Dawn” by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire is now available on Prime Video and is one of the greatest smaller international films I discovered that year. It is based on the experiences of British Billy Moore, a drug-addicted Muay Thai boxer who lives in Thailand and is jailed for drug dealing. […]
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You can now watch Raoul Peck’s 2016 US documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” on Netflix. The film is inspired by the unfinished manuscript “Remember This House,” a collection of notes and letters written by writer and activist James Baldwin in the 1970s that recall the work and life of his close friends and civil
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On Amazon Prime you can see the excellent movie “Dolor y Gloria” (Pain and Glory) from 2020 by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. A very personal work about an ageing film director with physical suffering, reflecting on the relationships and experiences that have shaped him in his life. Very sensitive film with Antonio Banderas and
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Das Weisse Band (“The White Ribbon”) is the first film I saw by Michael Haneke and is still my favourite film by the Austrian Director. Using the inhabitants of a small village just before the beginning of the First World War as an example, Haneke depicts the German society of that time, in which strict
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The Taiwanese film “Yi Yi” by Edward Yang from the year 2000 is a masterfully crafted, calm reflection on the aspects of human life. Using the example of a family of three generations, the drama shows how everyone, old or young, faces their own personal problems and challenges. While the film begins with a wedding,
Tokyo Olympiad (東京オリンピック, Tōkyō Orinpikku) is a 1965 Japanese documentary film directed by Kon Ichikawa, documenting the 1964 Olympic Summer Games in Japan. Tokyo Olympiad focuses more on the atmosphere of the Games than on journalistic coverage, making it an important cinematic work in contemporary history. Tokyo was supposed to host the Olympics as early
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This film was made between “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather Part II” (1974) and was a return to a small art film for Coppola. Gene Hackman plays wiretapping spy Harry Caul, who is tasked with intercepting a young couple’s conversation in the bustling Union Square in San Francisco. The words are clear, but their
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The horror silent film “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari” by Robert Wiene from 1920 is an important milestone in film history and counts as an essential work of German expressionist film. Before the Second World War, he had a profound stylistic influence on much of German cinema, was the forerunner of the atmospheric light-dark look
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Prime Video is finally showing Asif Kapadia’s great British documentary “Diego Maradona” from 2019. The film tells the story of the Argentine football star with a focus on his time in Naples from 1984 to 1991. From the rise to the football god to his dramatic fall. In the 1980s, Maradona’s agent Jorge Cyterszpiler had
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The Polish film “Cold War” (Zimna Wojna) by Pawel Pawlikowski, a very fine historical love drama, is available on Netflix and probably one of the best movies of 2018. After the Second World War, a music director in Poland was commissioned to find talent for a Polish folk music ensemble. He travels the country looking