Alternative Film Guide

The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival — according to its organizers, the first such event in the Americas to turn 50 — will take place between April 26 - May 6, 2007.

Among the scheduled films are:

On opening night, Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo / Golden Door (above), Italy’s submission for this year’s best foreign-language film Academy Award will be presented at the Castro Theatre. Nuovomondo follows an Italian family who leaves a remote Sicilian village for the United States in 1913. Charlotte Gainsbourg heads the cast.

Also: Pedro Costa’s Juventude em Marcha / Colossal Youth (upper photo), the director’s third installment in his ongoing portrayal of the residents of the Fontainhas district of Lisbon, a slum populated mostly by immigrants from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde; Philippe Falardeau’s quirky Congorama, winner of Quebec’s Jutra Award for best film; Daniel Wu’s The Heavenly Kings (middle photo), about three Hong Kong friends who form a boy band; and Ricardo Elias’s Os 12 Trabalhos / The 12 Labors (lower photo), which transposes the Hercules myth to the urban chaos of 21st-century São Paulo where a young working-class man tries to make a living as a delivery boy. Star Sidney Santiago shared the Best Actor award at last year’s Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.

Plus: Patrick Tam’s Hong Kong Film Award best picture winner Fu zi / After This Our Exile (upper photo), about the difficult relationship between a boy (Gouw Ian Iskandar) and his abusive father (Aaron Kwok); Verónica Chen’s Argentinean psychological drama about competitive swimmers, Agua / Aguas argentinas (middle photo); and Italian superstar Kim Rossi Stuart’s directorial debut, Anche libero va bene / Along the Ridge (lower photo), a family drama that brought Rossi Stuart a best new director nomination for this year’s Nastri d’Argento.

And more: Ray Lawrence’s well-received Australian psychological crime drama Jindabyne (upper photo), starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney, who were both nominated for the Australian Film Institute Awards; Olivier Dahan’s box-office hit La MÁ´me / La Vie en Rose (middle photo), starring Marion Cotillard as French singing legend Edith Piaf; Rajnesh Domalpalli’s Vanaja, about a low-caste fisherman’s daughter who struggles to find her place on the dance stage; and Alain Resnais’s haunting Coeurs / Private Fears in Public Places (lower photo), an intelligent, funny, touching, and beautifully acted, directed, and photographed fairy tale about the human inability to connect with others.

And even more: Mary Olive Smith’s documentary A Walk to Beautiful (upper photo), about young Ethiopian women traveling to Addis Ababa in order to receive adequate health care; Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley (middle photo), winner of the French Academy’s César for best film; Marwan Hamed’s remarkably accomplished — and quite controversial — feature-film debut, Omaret Yacoubian / The Yacoubian Building (lower photo), about intimate goings-on in one of Cairo’s landmark apartment buildings; and Nanni Moretti’s multiple Nastri d’Argento-nominee Il Caimano / The Caiman, a surrealistic attack on (at the time) Italian prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi.

And finally: Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first installment of Ray’s revered Apu Trilogy of the mid-to-late 1950s. Pather Panchali isn’t the best one of the three — Aparajito is by far the most involving — but even though Ray spends way too much time showing mosquitoes walking on water, this introduction to Apu’s poor Indian family offers several touching moments.

Tiburon Film Festival Awards - 2007 Winners

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2007 in San Francisco

The 11th San Francisco Silent Film Festival 

 

Add Alternative Film Guide to:        blinkbits BlinkList Bloglines blogmarks co.mments connotea del.icio.us De.lirio.us digg Fark FeedLounge feedmelinks Furl GoogleReader Kinja LinkaGoGo Ma.gnolia MyAOL MyMSN MyYahoo NetVibes NewsAlloy NewsBurst NewsGator NewsVine Netvouz Pluck RawSugar Reddit Rojo scuttle Shadows SimplyHeadlines Simpy Smarking Spurl TailRank Technorati Wists YahooMyWeb

 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS