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Das Wunder von Bern (Miracle of Berne) |
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Friday (Opening Night)
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Rated:G / Country: Germany / Director: Soenke Wortmann / Starring: Peter Lohmeyer, Louis Klamroth, Peter Franke, Lucas Gregorowicz
Set in the summer of 1954 when a father who has been a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union returns home to his wife and three children in a West German mining town. His severity and inability to adapt to post war life unsettles his once happy family, particularly his 11-year-old son Matthias, who has found a surrogate father in the local football player Helmut Rahn. The father regards football as pointless but through his son's passion for the German team to win the forthcoming World Cup in Bern, Switzerland, he comes alive again. |
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Ca commence aujourd’hui (It All Starts Today) |
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Friday (Opening Night)
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Rated:M (AT,LL) / Country: France / Director: Bertrand Tavernier / Starring: Philippe Torreton, Maria Pitaressi, Nadia Kaci
Bertrand Tarernier is one of France's most respected film-makers, whose output covers many genres, including "Un dimanche à la campagne" (1984) and "L.627", "Ça commence aujourd'hui" is a documentary-like, didactic film set in a primary school in a deprived area of northern France, where the staff are committed to improving the lives of the disadvantaged children and their families and are wonderfully
inspiring in their efforts. |
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Saturday
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Rated:MA (MV,MS) / Country: Japan / Director: Masato Harada / Starring: Koji Yakusho, Kazuya Takahashi, Reiko Kataoka, Kenichi Yajima
A Peruvian-raised, Japanese cab driver, Kantake, who's been deemed a second-class citizen since his return to his native land, experiences a dramatic lifestyle change when he hooks up with, and sets out on an odyssey with a yakuza trainee, Tatsuo, who has just robbed an aging, corrupt politician of a $2 million stash. |
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Shiqi sui de dan che (Beijing Bicycle) |
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Saturday
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Rated: M / Country: China / Director: Wang Xiao-Shuai / Starring: Cui Lin, Li Bin, Zhou Xun, Gao Yuanyuan
Set in the fast-paced metropolis of today's Beijing, this award-winning film by "Sixth Generation" director Wang Xiaoshuai deftly explores the tensions between city and country lifestyles, and between tradition and modernisation in China, through the tale of two youths and a silver mountain bike. |
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Sen to chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) |
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Saturday
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Country: Japan / Director: Hayao Miyazaki / Starring: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Takeshi Naitou
Chihiro, a sulky 10 year-old, reluctantly follows her parents into a mysterious tunnel in the forest. The tunnel leads to a ghostly town where a sumptuous banquet is laid out. Chihiro's parents fall upon the delicious food ravenously, but are transformed into pigs before Chihiro's eyes. The challenge for Chihiro is to rescue her parents from the magic spell and return to the human world. |
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La Finestra di fronte (Facing Windows) |
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Saturday
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Rated:M (ML,SR,LV) / Country: Italy / Director: Ferzan Ozpetek / Starring: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Massimo Girotti
Giovanna dreamed of becoming a pastry chef and had to settle for toiling at a chicken factory. Prickly and overworked, the 29-year-old resides in a noisy housing block in Rome, where she returns each day to spoiled brats and her husband, Filippo (Filippo Nigro), who has trouble holding down a job. One day the bickering couple spots a confused elderly man (Massimo Girotti) in the street who becomes their temporary guest. Davide, a Holocaust survivor suffering from progressive senile dementia, becomes the catalyst who will change Giovanna and Filippo's lives. |
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Pelangi di atas Prahara (Rainbow Above A Hurricane) |
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Saturday
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Country: Indonesia / Director: Putra Arradin / Starring: Panji Wiseso and Wanna Harahap
"Rainbow above a Hurricane" (Pelangi diatas Prahara) is an exciting romantic comedy about two Indonesians students who are studying in Australia (Perth). They are Arman (male) and Andara (female) who have totally different philosophies of life especially regarding sex. Arman is a man who embraces strong moral and religious values and wants a morally and religiously good girl as his lover, and Andara appears to be the woman of his dreams. They are involved in many different campus activities which bring them closer. Arman thinks that he has got a perfect girl. However, Andara has a dark secret which Arman would never imagine. Eventually, Arman finds out about the secret, but he is already in love with Andara. Will he dump Andara because of his moral and religious convictions? |
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Sunday
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Rated: M / Country: Germany / Director: Wolfgang Becker / Starring: Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Florian Lukas, Chulpan Khamatova, Maria Simon
October 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if you lived in East Germany - and this is precisely what happens to Alex's mother, an activist for social progress and the improvement of everyday life in socialist East Germany. Alex has a big problem on his hands when she suddenly awakens eight months later. Her heart is so weak that any shock might kill her. To save his mother, Alex transforms the family apartment into an island of the past, a kind of socialist museum where his mother is lovingly duped into believing that nothing has changed. |
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Sunday
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Rated:M (AT) / Country: Italy / Director: Emanuele Crialese / Starring: Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato, Francesco Casisa, Veronica D`Agostino
Valeria Golino, a young mother of three, doesn't seem mad yet her free-spirited ways and moody fits go against the mores of the small seaside village in Lampedusa. For a while, husband Vincenzo Amato stands by his sexy, stormy wife but soon becomes convinced that she should be sent away for medical treatment. But loving son Francesco Casisa protects her by hiding her in a cave and faking her death. |
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Sunday
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Rated:MA (ML,MV,AT) / Country: France / Director: Coline Serreau / Starring: Catherine Frot, Vincent Lindon, Rachida Brakni, Line Renaud
Coline Serreau is well-known for her huge box office succsses "Trois hommes et un couffin" (1985) (Three Men and a Baby), "Romuald et Juliette" (1989) (Romuald and Juliet) and "La Crise" (1992) (The Crisis), all of which dealt with social problems in a comically frenzied way. In"Chaos", Serreau opens a new front, directing a furious, cross-cultural barrage at male abuse. The film is a politically incorrect mix of comedy, social criticism and thriller. |
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Sunday
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Rated:PG (AT,LL,N) / Country: Australia / Director: David Batty / Starring: Simeon Jupurrula Ross, Steven Jupurrula Morton
A Bush Mechanic is someone who fixes his car using wood, tin, or whatever else is on hand to keep his car on the road. In Bush Mechanics - The Series viewers get to see five bush mechanics in action as they travel across the desert and the outback on their various adventures. In each of the four episodes the young Aboriginal men face a different set of problems, from struggling to get their new rock band to a gig, to recovering a stolen car, or travelling west in search of rain. Along the way their clapped-out cars need regular imaginative repairs. |
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Langitku Rumahku (My Sky, My Home) |
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Sunday
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Country: Indonesia / Director: Slamet Rahardjo Djarot / Starring: Pietrajaya Burnama, Banyu Biru
This Multi-Award Winning film from Indonesia is a poignant tale of an unlikely friendship that develops between two twelve year-old boys living in Jakarta, Indonesia, one from a rich family (Andri) and one from a poor family (Gempol). The film is about an adventure the boys take together which throws a light on the gap between rich and poor, political hypocrisy and social reality. |
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Xiao cheng zhi chun (Spring Time in a Small Town) |
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Sunday
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Country: China / Director: Tian Zhuangzhuang / Starring: Jun Wu, Bai Qing Xin
Almost a philological work on China in the late forties, the film is fascinating for its ambiguity; it is utterly contemporary and at the same time antique, a surprisingly modern classic tale that explores an intellectual's ambivalence about the present and his forebodings about China's future. Spring in a Small Town speaks a forgotten language, one of love and constraint, of allusions and double meanings, and of graceful gestures capable of condensing centuries of Chinese history and culture. |
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2004 Festival Programme 
