BETRAYED REVEALS THE FATE OF JEWS IN NAZI-CONTROLLED NORWAY Directed by Eirik Svensson, Betrayed begins with a Nazi roundup of Jews in 1942 and quickly reverts to 1939, when Charles Braude (played by Jakob Oftebro) wins against a Swedish opponent in a boxing match. Afterward, he celebrates with many friends, including a girlfriend, Ragnhild Boyesen […]
HOUSE OF GUCCI REVEALS LIFE AMONG THE ULTRARICH Directed by Ridley Scott, House of Gucci is a window into the rise and fall of the Gucci “dynasty,” based on the 2001 book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed by Sara Gay Forden. Guccio, the founder of the company,
I WAS A SIMPLE MAN PORTRAYS HAWAI’I AS A SIMPLE STATE Featuring an elderly Japanese American on the North Shore of Oʽahu, Hawaiʽi, who confronts his imminent death with memories of the past is the task of I Was a Simple Man. Masao Matsuyoshi (played by Steven Iwamoto) recalls his life in nonchronological order while
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Many long-time prisoners have recently been freed because they were victims of police and prosecutorial rush to judgment. Just how they adjust to life after prison is the focus of The Unforgivable, directed by Nora Fingscheid. Based on a 2009 TV miniseries in Britain that has been redesigned for the American audience, the former prisoner
HIVE DEPICTS HOW WIVES OF MIAS CAN BEST SURVIVE Directed by Blerta Bashollim, Hive reminds filmviewers that during 1999 Serbian forces slaughtered about 100 Albanian residents of the town of Krusha in Kosovo. Their remains are a mystery, especially to wives who were therefore impoverished. Two decades have passed, and the women stand in front
GIFT OF FIRE REVEALS THE KYOTO PROJECT The recent film Adventures of a Mathematician provides a window into the life of one researcher on the Manhattan Project, which sought to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany. He was obviously unaware that Japan was trying to do the same. Gift of Fire, directed by Hiroshi
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Belfast focuses on 8- or 9-year-old Buddy (played by Jude Hill) in the midst of the civil war in Northern Island. The film is a biopic of the director. Although tensions had first emerged between Catholics and Protestants in 1966, an escalation to violence occurred in the year depicted in the
Beans, directed by Tracey Deer, focuses on a young teenager nicknamed Beans (played by Kiawentiio), who has a delicate appearance early in the story and grows into a much stronger person due to the influences of her father, mother, and friends. The context is a 78-day protest by the Mohawk tribe of Québec, where the
PEEPAL TREE PREDICTS AN END TO TREES = END OF THE HUMAN RACE When the film begins, a man (played by director Kranti Kanadé) is annoyed that government officials (police) living nearby are cutting down trees on his land. Not until the very end of Peepal Tree is the screen filled with examples of trees
THE LAST FOREST PREDICTS AN END TO THE AMAZON FOREST The point of The Last Forest (Ostatnia Puszcza) appears in titles at the end, which point out that gold prospecting and ore mining are driving the Indigenous population from ancestral lands in Brazil near the border with Venezuela. Although their land was protected by the