FilmWalrus Favorites <400

Three friends hope to build a factory but their plans are quickly jeopardized by local politics and one of the partner's dangerous love affair.

The four stories that are variations on the crucial themes of moral strength and the death penalty that ask to what extent individual freedom can be expressed under a despotic regime and its seemingly inescapable threats.

A story that follows the lives and interactions of two Buddhist monks living in South Korea.

Peter is the dark brooding type. Leading a vacuous, shapeless life, he longs for the ideal woman, while at the same time, half heartedly continuing with his habitual girlfriend, Marusa , who is considerably older, a fact that Peter is quick to point out. As an ageing actress, struggling for parts in her local theatre, she oozes insecurity and breathes uncertainty. Together, they spend their time in the local restaurant, smoking, drinking and trading verbal blows. "I bet you'll just end up a drunk," she tells Peter each time. Peter just grins and tells her how old she looks. Compounded by a thankless director who soon shows her the door, Marusa finds her identity being squeezed harder and harder against the wall. To escape, Peter and Marusa dream...

Rookie policeman Will Ren and his partner, the veteran cop Cham Lau, are pursuing an obsessive and especially brutal murderer of women.

In 1916 as an officer in the Habsburg Army ethnic Romanian Apostol Bologa is torn between remaining loyal to the Habsburgs or deserting to the Romanian Army across enemy lines.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

Elsa saw the blessed Virgin Mary who had changed her life and caused a hysteria in a poor isolated village.

Olivier, the nine-year-old son of Elisabeth and country veterinarian Serge, vanishes one afternoon on the way to his grandmother's house. The emotional aftermath of his disappearance sends his father packing from France to Africa and nearly destroys his mother, who clings to her remaining child Nadine--and her devoted neighbor Marcel. Several years later, having relocated to the city, the police investigator who handled the case meets a Paris rent-boy whom he believes is the missing Olivier. Once he returns to his rural home, the teenage Olivier tries to assuage his mother's now-entrenched grief and heal the rift between his reunited parents. Meanwhile, he must overcome his brooding adolescent sister's jealousy and doubts about his identity and reconcile his sleazy street life with his picturesque new surroundings. Questions about the tight-lipped Olivier's true motivations continue to crop up, however, threatening to send his mother over the edge for good.

In this adventurous experiment in storytelling, secret identities, missing persons, lost treasures, exotic beasts and desperate criminals are only a few of the elements woven into a grand tapestry of mysteries.

The backwater town of Magguson becomes the stage of 3 people, whose lives are hollow, traumatic and lonesome, but ultimately interconnected.

A young couple forsakes their urban existence for life in the exciting but dangerous Peruvian jungle.

On Mondays, a young woman is murdered in the subway, leading psychiatrist Setsuko Suma to investigate Dr. Rei Aku's deprogramming of former sect members.

Varlam, the despotic mayor of a small town, dies. After his funeral, his body is repeatedly unearthed and buried again. Through flashbacks and dreamlike scenes, we witness his rise, power and ambiguities.

In 1995, director Steve James (of 'Hoop Dreams') returned to rural Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy to whom he had been an "Advocate Big Brother" ten years earlier.

Christine, newly widowed and consumed by the memory of a ball she attended age 16, decides to track down the men she danced with that night and discover their fates.

Thanos, a poor shepherd who has returned to Greece after spending time in Germany as an immigrant worker, puts into motion the mechanism of fate.

Based on the epic graphic novel by John Bergin, FROM INSIDE is the tale of Cee, a young pregnant woman who finds herself on a damaged train slowly transcribing its way across a bleak, apocalyptic landscape. Flood, war, starvation, and a plague of death threaten the train's passengers. Cee struggles through these dangers while coping with the memory of her lost husband and the imminent birth of her child.

The depraved manager of a high-tech poultry factory is pulled into a love triangle with his domineering wife and her sexually-liberated cousin, leading to double-crosses and murder.

In an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, a young girl is kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit.

An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bruno.

Near a remote Buddhist monastery, a young man falls in love with his sister and gets her pregnant. After a monk finds out, the young man becomes an assistant to a master sculptor, only to proceed to complicate matters with his affairs.

While in Thailand to avenge his brother who was crippled in a fight with a corrupt Thai boxer, a man gets caught up in a web of fate, Buddhism and black magic.

When Adam and Eve, having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are expelled from the Garden of Eden, Adam makes Lucifer keep his promise. Lucifer then grants Adam a dream of the world to come.

The film explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death through an experimental photographer, an ailing monk and a young stockbroker.