Mutum
Sandra Kogut, Brazil, 2007, 86 min., Portuguese
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 3 p.m., Frontenac 1

Thiago is a sensitive and imaginative boy living on a small, hardscrabble farm in a remote region of Brazil. Although his life is filled with curiosity and youthful discovery, it’s also marked by his parent’s unhappy marriage and his father’s abuse. Director Sandra Kogut, in her poetic adaptation of the well-known Brazilian short story “Campo Geral,” focuses on minute details of rural life to tell a bittersweet story of one boy’s coming-of-age amid events both great and small. “Mutum” is a multiple award winner at fests worldwide, from Berlin to Rio to Rotterdam.

My Time Will Come
(Cuando Me Toque A Mi)
Víctor Arregui, Ecuador, 2008, 90 min., Spanish
Saturday, Nov. 14, 3 p.m., Frontenac 1

A predawn murder sets in motion a series of interlocking tragedies that eventually find their way to the city morgue’s brooding Dr. Arturo Fernandez. Physically and emotionally isolated from the world around him, Arturo develops an oddly intimate relationship with the personal lives of the dead, gradually forcing him to confront his connection to the living. Adapted from the novel “De Que Nada Se Sabe,” director Víctor Arregui’s serpentine tale – structurally reminiscent of the Oscar®-winning "Crash" – is a dark but sympathetic portrait of one man’s solitude set against a richly textured rendering of Quito, Ecuador’s capital city.

North Face
(Nordwand)
Philipp Stoltz, Austria/Germany, 2008, 126 min., German, Swiss German, French & Italian
Friday, Nov. 13, 6:45 p.m., Frontenac 6
Saturday, Nov. 14, 7 p.m., Frontenac 6

Set in 1936, as Nazi propaganda urges Germany’s alpinists to conquer the unclimbed north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, this suspenseful adventure film re-creates the attempt by real-life German climbers Toni and Andi to make a daring ascent of the so-called Murder Wall in competition with a pair of Austrians. The climb is further complicated by an old flame of Toni’s, a journalist who has come with her boss, a loyal Nazi, to report on the ascent. A gripping film with a vivid sense of its historic moment, “North Face” also serves as both homage to and critique of the great German mountain films of the ‘20s and ‘30s. The Independent raves: “A mountaineering adventure more tense, more edge-of-the-seat suspenseful, than ‘Touching the Void’? Almost incredibly, this German drama, based on a true story, is that film.”

Sponsored by St. Louis-Stuttgart Sister Cities

Once Upon a Time
in the West
Sergio Leone, U.S., 1968, 175 min.
Saturday, Nov. 14, 2 p.m., Webster

This gloriously restored Western – screened from a new 35mm print – ranks as legendary director Sergio Leone’s undisputed masterpiece. When Mrs. McBain (Claudia Cardinale) moves from New Orleans to frontier Utah, she finds husband and family slaughtered. Prime suspect Cheyenne (Jason Robards) befriends her and, with the mysterious Harmonica (Charles Bronson), pursues the real killer (a wonderfully malevolent Henry Fonda). The film features gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli, a haunting score by Ennio Morricone, and a screenplay co-written by Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento. The Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr notes that Leone “expands his baroque, cartoonish style into genuine grandeur, weaving dozens of thematic variations and narrative arabesques around a classical western foundation myth…. Moments of intense realism flow into passages of operatic extravagance; lowbrow burlesque exists side by side with the expression of the most refined shades of feeling.”

Shown with The Gigantic World of Epics.

One Day You’ll Understand
(Plus tard tu comprendras)
Amos Gitai, France, 2008, 90 min., French
Tuesday, Nov. 17, 6:30 p.m., Frontenac 6
Thursday, Nov. 19, 2:15 p.m., Frontenac 6

Based on Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical novel of the same name, “One Day You’ll Understand” takes place in France in 1987 following the conviction of infamous Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The trial, which captivated the entire country, inspires Catholic businessman Victor Bastien (Hippolyte Girardot) to investigate the concentration-camp deaths of his Jewish grandparents, a subject rarely mentioned by his mother (the incomparable Jeanne Moreau). Through Bastien’s quest, Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai (“Free Zone,” “Kadosh”) contemplates the weight a family’s devastating history holds on its posterity. Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir writes: “In Moreau, Girardot, Dominique Blanc and Emmanuelle Devos, it has four of the finest actors in recent French history, and the intimate, indirect portrait they create of a loving family constrained by silence is magnificent.”

Sponsored in part by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Chicago

The Only Good Indian
Kevin Willmott, U.S., 2009, 113 min.
Friday, Nov. 20, 7 p.m., Tivoli 3

In this provocative revisionist Western, director Kevin Willmott (“C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America”) provides a Native American response to John Ford’s “The Searchers.” Set in Kansas during the early 1900s, “The Only Good Indian” tells the story of a teenage Native American boy who is taken from his family and forced to attend a distant Indian “training” school whose mission is to assimilate him into white society. When the teen escapes, Cherokee bounty hunter Sam Franklin (Wes Studi), who’s renounced his native heritage and has adopted the white man’s way of life, is hired to find and return him to the institution. Along the way, a tragic incident spurs famous Indian fighter Sheriff Henry McCoy to pursue both Franklin and the boy. “The Only Good Indian” premiered at Sundance.
With director Willmott.

Co-presented by Washington U.’s Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values

The Photograph
Nan Achnas, Indonesia, 2007, 98 min., Indonesian
Friday, Nov. 20, 4:30 p.m., Frontenac 1

Sita is a spirited young woman working to support her family as a singer and prostitute in a local brothel. Always short of funds and bullied by her pimp, she convinces elderly portrait photographer Mr. Johan to rent her a room. In failing health and haunted by a tragedy whose exact nature is only slowly revealed, Mr. Johan is equally desperate: He’s on the hunt for an apprentice to carry on his work before he dies. The bond that develops between the unlikely pair is the basis for a poignant work about the profound effect one life can have on another. Describing “The Photograph” as a “tender and contemplative drama,” the Hollywood Reporter says that “Achnas directs at a gentle pace, allowing cinematographer Yadi Sugandi to frame compelling images and capture two strong lead performances.”

Possible Lives
(Las Vidas Posibles)
Sandra Gugliotta, Argentina, 2007, 80 min., Spanish
Tuesday, Nov. 17, 5 p.m., Frontenac 1

When her geologist husband (Germán Palacios) vanishes on a business trip, Carla (Ana Celentano) travels to the desolate Patagonian region of South America in search of him. Arriving at the hotel where he was supposed to stay, she encounters a man bearing a striking resemblance to her husband, but he proves a resident of the area. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Carla remains convinced that that the look-alike is her amnesiac spouse, and she grows ever more obsessed with uncovering the elusive truth about her husband’s disappearance. “Possible Lives” made its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Lee Daniels, U.S., 2009, 109 min.
Saturday, Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m., Hi-Pointe

Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance, Lee Daniels’ adaptation of the controversial novel by poet Sapphire takes an unflinching look at the life of Clareece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe, in a fearless breakthrough performance), an illiterate, obese teenage girl living in 1987 Harlem. After becoming pregnant with her second child at the hands of her father, Clareece enrolls in an alternative school to place her life back on track. Championed by both Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, “Precious” also features standout performances from Mo’Nique as Precious’ tyrannical mother and Mariah Carey as a sympathetic welfare counselor. In a post-fest roundup, the LA Weekly’s Scott Foundas declared that “there isn’t much I’ve seen at Sundance this year that I wouldn’t trade for the sight of a hard-won smile finally making its way across Precious Jones’ stoic, beautiful, wounded face.”
Followed by a discussion on the issues raised by the film with Deanna Rhodes, CASA case advocacy supervisor, and Tina Amrein, CASA volunteer since 2004.

Sponsored by Stella Artois
Co-sponsored by Majic 104.9 FM, Clear Channel Radio

Princess of the Sun
(La reine soleil)
Philippe Leclerc, France/Belgium/Hungary, 2007, 90 min., French
Saturday, Nov. 21, 10 a.m., Brown Hall
FREE PROGRAM

Set in ancient Egypt during the 18th dynasty, the gorgeously animated “Princess of the Sun” tells the story of beautiful 14-year-old Akhesa. An impetuous young girl, she rebels against her father, refusing to live within the royal palace’s walls and demanding to know why her mother, Queen Nefertiti, has been exiled. With the help of Prince Tut, Akhesa runs away in search of her mother, and the two teenagers travel down the Nile, cheating death among the burning desert dunes. Variety says “Princess of the Sun” “does a splendid job of bringing the structures and sandy vistas of ancient Egypt to life.… Film, whose original 2-D animation was hand-drawn (in Hungary) and then scanned, rather than being totally computer-generated, is aimed at kids, yet never talks down to them or indulges in antics that don’t move the saga forward.”

Co-presented by Washington U.'s Center for the Humanities
Sponsored in part by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Chicago