99 Events in February 2008

The riots that confronted the World Trade Organization’s 1999 meeting in Seattle forced politically minded citizens into some tough intellectual deliberation. First there were the horrible images of smashed windows and police brutality on the ... (click to read more)

With the beguiling Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell in the lead roles, Woody Allen’s powerful new work commands us fully from its opening shot. Terry (Farrell) works in an auto-body shop and is recovering from struggles with liquor and ... (click to read more)

Iska’s Journey tells the harrowing story of a twelve-year-old girl who shows courage in the face of harsh poverty, only to succumb eventually to its ravages. Csaba Bollók’s third feature film is surely one of the most stunning entries of ... (click to read more)

Philippe Aractingi’s Under The Bombs was made in Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the war last year. Aractingi was living in Beirut during the Israeli attacks on the city and filmed some footage at the height of the conflict. This may ... (click to read more)

Showing as part of the festival’s Music on Film season, the World Premiere of Dambe,The Mali Project is a fascinating musical journey through modern day Africa. Described by Bono as is “the best white soul singer in the world”, Liam ... (click to read more)

A family‘s crises come to the surface in this drama, the first feature from filmmaker Matthias Luthardt. Stefan (Rockstroh) and Anna (Mitterhammer) are a petit bourgeois couple who live a bland existence in the suburbs with their nebbishy son ... (click to read more)

This is a deeply considered and unexpectedly gripping film from a director making a giant leap into the first rank of world cinema. On finally fading to black, it leaves behind on the blank screen, as if on the inside of a closed eyelid, a ... (click to read more)

My film diaries 1970-1979: my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. Friends, ... (click to read more)

Mala Noche was the 33-year-old Gus Van Sant’s debut feature and is the first of his bittersweet odes to tender outcasts, remaining the simplest and least burdened.

Arriving on the damp streets of Portland, Johnny (Cooeyate) and ... (click to read more)

Over nearly four decades, Swedish master stylist Roy Andersson has directed just four features. While cinephiles were forced to wait almost twenty-five years for his 2000 chefd’æuvre, Songs from the Second Floor, we have been granted the ... (click to read more)

80-year-old Martha manages to overcome her sorrow over her husband’s death when she starts living out a secret dream. She closes down the grocery store and instead opens a shop selling homemade lingerie. Since she is the mother of the town’s ... (click to read more)

Father of three, Juha is a caring husband to his depressed wife. Every morning before leaving the house he counts her pills to make sure she has taken the correct dose. He’s trying to keep his family together, although unbeknown to them he’s ... (click to read more)

The lovely Audrey Tautou (Amélie) brings out all her charm as the frivolous Irène, a girl who likes to hunt for sugar daddies on the French Riviera. She loves all things luxurious and has an addiction to Chanel and Lacroix. But the branded ... (click to read more)

Kiumars Pourahmad’s spare, masculine Night Bus, taking place during a single night on a dangerous desert road, has a realism that aids in punching home its anti-war sentiments. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, 18-year-old Essa (Mehrdad ... (click to read more)

A middle-class couple and their son motor along country lanes, with sunlight dappling through the trees. The mood is prosperous, relaxed… a little opera plays on the car stereo… until the heavy metal comes clashing in on the ... (click to read more)

Autumn Ball is a new Estonian film that talks about six inhabitants of Soviet-era tower blocks whose lives touch together, and who are all united by a feeling of loneliness. The young writer, Mati, lurks outside the window of his ex-wife and ... (click to read more)

The Brig

USA / 1964 / 68 minutes / Black & White / 16mm

The Brig, written by a veteran who survived incarceration in a U.S. Marine Corps prison during the 1950’s, is a chilling portrait of the ... (click to read more)

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you spend more time than is necessarily healthy sitting in dark auditoria revelling in the communal experience of watching movies. You will love this film.

Directed by Uli Gaulke, Comrades ... (click to read more)

Tom Kalin’s long-awaited new feature is based on the award-winning book of the same title, and like his earlier (and highly influential) Swoon, draws its material from a real life crime story tinged with sexual undertones.

Beginning ... (click to read more)

Anna (Kathryn Worth) is a woman in her mid-40s, who arrives alone at the Italian holiday home of an extended bourgeois family. She’s the old school friend of matriarch Verena (Mary Roscoe), but is soon distracted from ‘the olds’ and drawn ... (click to read more)

This rollicking story of a rich kid whose wildly successful bid for popularity has him playing drug-distributing shrink to an entire high school boasts pitch-perfect faceoffs between upstart Anton Yelchin and alcoholic principal Robert Downey ... (click to read more)

Li Yang’s intense psychological drama was one of the stand-outs at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Portraying the kidnapping of a young female student by a peasant family – who force her to be their only son’s bride – the film grips with ... (click to read more)

Theo, a rapist, is released after nine years in a psychiatric hospital’s prison ward. His fear of women and the unfulfilled desire this generates turns normal life into a kind of martyrdom.

At the age of 27, Nettie finally manages to ... (click to read more)

Winner of the Audience Award at last year’s JDIFF, John Carney’s charming musical has gone on to break box-office records around the world. Even the great Stephen Spielberg has been reported as declaring that the ... (click to read more)

It is Alabama, 1950, and the season of the cotton harvest. Tyrone ‘Pine Top’ Purvis (Danny Glover) runs and plays piano at the Honeydripper Lounge, a shack bar in the little crossroads town of Harmony that has seen better days. The time of ... (click to read more)

Naomi Kawase’s powerfully beautiful The Mourning Forest mixes a modern sensibility with animistic beliefs to create a whispered elegy to love and its ability to persist long after death.

Old Shigeki (Shigeki Uda), suffering from ... (click to read more)

Maggie needs money urgently. Her grandson is seriously ill in hospital, and the medication that could save his life is way beyond what his parents can afford. She will have to come up with an idea soon if she is to give her son and ... (click to read more)

Living conditions are deteriorating for those who lead a rural existence in north-western Mongolia. China’s industry is expanding – even into this inhospitable region – and the government is pressurising Monoglian shepherds to give up ... (click to read more)

Sandra Kogut’s first feature, Mutum, explores the spaces and stories that children invent to try to understand the actions and words of the adults in their lives. Based on a popular Brazilian novel by João Guimarães Rosa, Mutum shows us the ... (click to read more)

Introvert Joosep is the butt of crude jokes from his classmates who are irritated by his taciturn nature. The only support he has comes from Kaspar, whom he sits next to in class. Anders, the leader of a gang, steps up his behaviour towards both ... (click to read more)

Sergei Bodrov has fulfilled a long-time dream in bringing the heart-wrenching story of one of the great rulers of the Mongol Dynasty to the screen. The tale of how a young boy ascended to become Khan centres Bodrov’s epic tale of love and ... (click to read more)

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is delighted to present the European Premiere of U2 3D. For over a quarter-century, U2 has been recognised not only for their musical invention, but for their incomparable ... (click to read more)

Like his Oscar-winning Kolya, Jan Sverák’s new film stars and is scripted by his father, Zdenek Sverák. Past retirement age, schoolteacher Josef Tkaloun finds he no longer understands his pupils and decides to resign. However, unaccustomed ... (click to read more)

An idyllic town surrounded by mountains is shocked by the murder of young and beautiful Anna (Alessia Piovan), found nude on the side of a lake but with no signs of sexual assault or a struggle. Inspector Giovanni Sanzio (Servillo) is called in ... (click to read more)

Karcsi Szabó is a member of the Hungarian water polo team, one of Europe’s leading teams. Last year, the team’s only defeat was in Moscow, where they only lost because the referee refused to let them win. Now the team are training ... (click to read more)

Set in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and everybody has strongly held opinions about how others should conduct their affairs (but wouldn’t dare voice those opinions publicly), Just Like Home recounts what happens when those ... (click to read more)