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Friday (Opening Night)
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Rated:M / Country: Australia / Director: Anna Kannava / Starring: Maria Mercedes
Dreams for Life is the first feature by Melbourne based Greek immigrant filmmaker Anna Kannava starring Maria Mercedes and Dai Paterson. The film which was short listed for Cannes in 2005 is an uniquely Australian story about a 39 year old recluse, Ellen, who meets Martin, the much younger brother of her childhood love who she used to look after as a baby. Martin, who is now a young man, falls in love with Ellen and attempts to open up her world of solitude. |
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Friday (Opening Night)
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Rated: M (LV,LS,LL) / Country: France / Director: Philippe Lioret / Starring: Sandrine Bonnaire, Philippe Torreton, Grégori Dérangère
In 1963, Antoine Cassendi (Grégori Derangère) is wounded in the Algerian war and arrives at the small island of Ouessant to join the team of lighthouse keepers. The locals feel the job should have gone to one of their own, and Antoine is not only a stranger but also a novice, and struggles to fit in. Easygoing and good-humoured despite the animosity directed toward him, Antoine slowly bonds with sullen, unfriendly Yvon Le Guen (Philippe Torreton) during their periods of extended isolation in the offshore lighthouse. Worse for Antoine is that he is unable to disguise his deep attraction to Yvon's wife Mabé (Sandrine Bonnaire) and this threatens both of them. |
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Saturday
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Rated:M / Country: India / Director: Aparna Sen / Starring: Konkona Senshoma, Rahul Bose, Bhisham Sahni, Anjan Dutt
Mr. and Mrs. Iyer is an adventure-romance that takes place in the midst of religious riots. However, the adventure seems more charming than thrilling, despite the backdrop of violence and social unrest, and the romance is engaging but not particularly passionate, despite the element of forbidden love. The film doesn't explore the story's political context with much depth, but it does have a commendable message in favor of religious tolerance. |
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POLITIKI KOUZINA (A Touch of Spice) |
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Saturday
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Country: Greece / Director: Tassos Boulmetis / Starring: Georges Corraface, Ieroklis Mihailidis, Renia Louizidou
This record breaking Greek box office hit by director Tassos Boulmetis is about more than the love of spices and food. Life requires a bit of spice here and there, especially when you are a professor of astrophysics with a supposedly unnatural obsession with cooking. |
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Saturday
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Country: Indonesia / Director: Eros Djarot / Starring: Christine Hakim, Slamet Rahardjo Djarot, Rita Zaharah, Pietradjaja Burnama
In March 1873, when Sumatra was still under Dutch rule, Holland declared war on the rebellious northern kingdom of Aceh. The pious Muslim people of Aceh, a city that had flourished since ancient times as a trade port, gathered together under the leadership of Tueku Umar and his wife Tjoet Nja' Dhien and entered into a fierce war. But in the course of the war, the information passed on to the enemy by a spy caused the death of Tueku Umar. Tjoet Nja' Dhien took his place and led the people under the proud banner of independence and the spirit of Islam. The war continued for thirty years until Tjoet Nja' Dhien was so bowed down with age and sickness that Pang Laot turned her over to the Dutch army on the condition that they would give her medical care. As a result, Tjoet Nja' Dhien was banished to Sumedan where she ended her tempestuous life, lauded as a people's heroine in the struggle for national independence. |
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Saturday
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Country: Bhutan / Director: Khyentse Norbu / Starring: Tshewang Dendup, Lhakpa Dorji
This is a film by director Khyentse Norbu of The Cup fame. Shot in Bhutan, this film is about dreams and yearning for experiences beyond one's own culture. It is a roadmovie of a different kind with a mystical fable of lust, jealousy and murder against the beautiful wild countryside of the kingdom of Bhutan. |
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Saturday
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Rated:MA (MV) / Country: Germany / Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel / Starring: Bruno Ganz, Corinna Harfouch, Alexandra Maria Larah
Oliver Hirschbiegel's master piece is a reconstruction of a totalitarian system facing its unstoppable disintegration. Bruno Ganz' depiction of Hitler in his last days as both a man and a monster is a tour de force. He portrays a man who has lost all grip on reality. |
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Saturday
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Rated: M / Country: China / Director: Wong Kar Wai / Starring: Tony Leung, Gong Li, Takuya Kimura, Faye Wong, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung
Set in the late 1960s, journalist and pulp-fiction writer Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) has taken residence in the Oriental Hotel, where several bewitching women cross his path. On the surface, Chow seems in control, pursuing a playboy lifestyle: immaculately dressed, he struts through the nightclubs of Hong Kong. He's a raffish bachelor and a natural seducer and heartbreaker. Yet, as we watch him with a series of beautiful women, we come to realise that this is all a front. He's bruised and battered by love and has buried his heart, somewhere so deep, no one can ever find it. |
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ETRE ET AVOIR (To Be and To Have) |
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Sunday
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Rated: G / Country: France / Director: Nicolas Philibert / Starring: Georges Lopez, Alize, Axel, Guillaume, Jessie
The one-room schoolhouse, where one teacher instructs several grades at once, is generally regarded a quaint thing of the past and a symbol of obsolete and ineffective teachingmethods. However, the documentary To Be and to Have offers an in-depth look at a small school in rural France where one remarkable man has been doing the job of a small teaching staff for 20 years, and has taught several generations of bright and capable children along the way. Georges Lopez is an educator at a small school in France's Auvergne region, where between December 2000 and June 2001 he taught 12 students between the ages of four and ten. |
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ZATOICHI (The Blind Swordsman) |
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Sunday
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Rated:MA (AT,HV) / Country: Japan / Director: Takeshi Kitano / Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Michiyo Ogusu, Taka Gatarukanaru
The internationally acclaimed director, 'Beat' Takeshi, has presented his own take on one of Japan's most popular cultural heroes - the blind master swordsman Zatoichi. This is a thrilling martial arts flick that is at the same time a picturesque historical epic and a typically 'Beat'-ish humourous and whacky portrayal of a familiar character and nostalgic setting. |
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LACELET AL HAMAIM (Walk On Water) |
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Sunday
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Rated:M (AT,LS,LL) / Country: Israel / Director: Eytan Fox / Starring: Lior Ashkenazi, Carolina Peters, Knut Berger
An Israeli agent with a license to kill is thrown off his game by two people who challenge his deeply held assumptions in this drama. Eyal is an agent with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and security force. A man capable of making snap moral judgments but unwilling to reveal his emotions, Eyal has been burying himself in his often bloody work since the death of his wife. Eyal's latest assignment is to try to learn the whereabouts of a Nazi war criminal; as it happens, his granddaughter Pia is in Israel spending time on a kibbutz, and when he learns that her brother Axel is coming to visit her, Eyal goes undercover as a tour guide in order to get to know them without arousing suspicion. Eyal finds himself taken with Pia, who displays a warmth and openness he's never expected to find in a German |
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BUONGIORNO, NOTTE (Good Morning, Night) |
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Sunday
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Rated:M (LV,LL) / Country: Italy / Director: Marco Bellocchio / Starring: Giovanni Calcagno, Luigi Lo Cascio
Good Morning, Night is established writer/director Marco Bellocchio's take on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democratic Party, which rocked Italian politics in the late '70s. Bellocchio tells the story from Chiara's point-of-view, as her romantic relationship with fellow cell member Primo and her allegiance to their strident leader, Mariano, is gradually shaken as she begins to develop respect and affection for their hapless captive, Moro. She also begins to feel attracted to Enzo, a co-worker at her office job who has similar political leanings, but strongly disagrees with the Red Brigade's tactics. Chiara spends hours watching Moro in his "cell" through a peephole, as he defends his political actions in a mock trial conducted by Mariano. |
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LA MALA EDUCACIÓN (Bad Education) |
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Sunday
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Rated:MA (AT,MS,DU) / Country: Spain / Director: Pedro Almodóvar / Starring: Fele Martinez, Gael Garcia Bernal
Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar takes a look at his own adolescence as well as confronting the issue of sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church in this stylish drama. Enrique Goded is a Spanish filmmaker who is having trouble settling on a new project when he's approached by Ignacio Rodriguez, who was his close friend when they were schoolboys. Goded, who fell in love for the first time with Rodriguez, barely recognizes the man as his former crush, but agrees to read the short story he's written. The tale turns out to be an semi-autobiographical account of their days in a Catholic boarding school, in which a cross-dressing night-club performer named Zahara hooks up with a man named Enrique, who turns out to have been his first lover when he was a student. |
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2005 Festival Programme 
