Movies: Special Guests' Films

Hannah Arendt

How to portray a person whose job it is to think – this is the challenge von Trotta tackles in her biopic of the philosopher Hannah Arendt.

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Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan

Singer and lyricist of the band The Pogues, Shane MacGowan (1957-2023), Irish national hero and patron saint of drunkards, is remembered for his public self-destructiveness, jagged teeth, ragged but charismatic habitus, massive, troll-like ears, and incoherent, slurred speech, which from time to time might have benefitted from subtitles for comprehension.

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D is for Distance

Fifteen filmless years have passed since Content (if we ignore Petit's minute contribution to the omnibus The Film That Buys the Cinema, 2014).

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Absolute Beginners

This adaptation of Colin MacInnes' 1959 novel about London's jazz circles and its burgeoning rock scene was a critical and commercial failure upon release, but Julien Temple's fascinating and exquisitely colourful musical has gained momentum during later years.

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Ari

Unlike with the protagonist of Montparnasse Bienvenüe, Ari’s detachment is a little painful.

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Chevalier

In 2011 Athina Rachel Tsangari visited Sodankylä with her wild cult film Attenberg (2010). As characterful and as charming is her film Chevalier; a slightly comic depiction of a group of men – once again strongly in the spirit of the Greek New Wave.

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A Room in Town

Jacques Demy's '80s magnum opus continues in the genre of sung-through musical familiar from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).

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A Gentle Woman

Bresson's earliest “official” Dostoevsky adaptation – of the short story A Gentle Creature (Krotkaya, 1876) – transposes the setting of the St Petersburg story to Paris in the late 1960s.

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