Films / Programs

Contemporary World Cinema

Take a whirlwind world tour in just 11 days—without leaving your seat. This year’s selection of Contemporary World Cinema whisks you from Ireland to Italy, Canada to Korea, the tip of Argentina to the fjords of Iceland and beyond. As you broaden your horizons and soak up some local color, you’re bound to rediscover yourself—right here at SDFF35.

Adam's End
Austria , 2011 , 81 min. The world of Adam, his girlfriend Anna, and their friends Conrad and Carmen is comfortable, but they seem as detached and aimless as they are clean-cut and pretty. Director Richard Wilhelmer captures subtle exchanges and awkward moments to build toward a horrifying climax.... more
American Animal
USA , 2011 , 95 min. Jimmy is sick. But Jimmy is tired of being sick, so this morning, Jimmy decides he is no longer sick—he’s happy. An existential fantasy set in a downtown LA loft, Matt D’Elia’s debut feature walks the line between silliness and madness, all the while nodding to classic cinema. Jimmy, it’s showtime!... more
Angele and Tony
France , 2010 , 87 min. Filming entirely on location in Port-en-Bessin, Alix Delaporte delivers an unconventional love story about the transformative power of kindness.... more
Animal Town
South Korea , 2009 , 97 min. Set in modern-day Seoul, Korean writer-director Jeon Kyu-hwan’s drama portrays the lives of two men connected in the past by a horrific event; against the backdrop of bustling optimism, their lives are being destroyed by desperation. Animal Town is the second installment in the Town Trilogy.... more
The Artist
France , 2011 , 100 min. French director Michel Hazanavicius has dared to make a silent film in black and white. Set in Hollywood in 1927, it echoes Singin' in the Rain and A Star Is Born as a matinee idol on the wane falls for a female extra destined for stardom in the talkies.... more
Attenberg
Greece , 2010 , 95 min. In a small, industrial Greek town, Marina is finally ready to undergo a sexual awakening at the age of 23. Thus unfolds the human experience in Attenberg, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s quirky, tongue-in-cheek drama about sex, death, and synchronized dancing.... more
August
Finland , 2011 , 108 min. In Finnish writer-director Oskari Sipola’s debut feature, August, chance encounters with the bewitching Juli change the trajectory of earnest Aku’s summer. But the passage to adulthood is a rocky one in this combination road movie and coming-of-age tale.... more
Bad Fever
USA , 2011 , 77 min. Dustin Guy Defa’s dramatic feature debut is a wrenching portrait of lonely souls roaming an empty city in desperate need of connection. Kentucker Audley is astonishing as true antihero Eddie, a would-be stand–up comic attempting to win the heart of a drifter.... more
The Ballad of Narayama
Japan , 1983 , 130 min. Shôhei Imamura's 1983 drama about self-sacrifice, survival, and the brutal harmonies of life in a 19th- century Japanese village features one of the great screen performances: Sumiko Sakamoto is a flinty matriarch who, like all villagers at age 70, must climb holy Mount Narayama and die alone.... more
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Canada , 2011 , 110 min. MUST END Thursday, June 14th! Digital presentation - Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and count down from ten. You are about to go beyond the black rainbow.
Panos Cosmatos’ moody sci-fi head trip is set within the confines of a stark and sterile laboratory circa 1983, where Dr... more
The Big Chill
USA , 1983 , 105 min. Lawrence Kasdan’s classic tale of reunited friends growing older and more or less wiser first screened at the Denver International Film Festival in 1985 as part of a three-film tribute to the actor Jeff Goldblum.... more
Bon Voyage
Netherlands , 2010 , 85 min. Dutch director Margien Rogaar fashions a gentle portrait of a suburban family in transition: the grandfather is dying; the teenage granddaughter yearns to be a woman; her little brother is betrayed by his best friend; and the youngest sibling glimpses mortality in her love for grandpa.... more
Brothers
Finland , 2011 , 90 min. Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki uses The Brothers Karamazov as his model and a stormy family reunion as a platform for this tale of three emotionally damaged brothers who confront their wolfish, boozy old father with his past sins—even as they're eating his 70th birthday cake.... more
Butter
USA , 2011 , 91 min. MUST END Thursday, October 18th! 35mm presentation - A tale of competition at its most cut-throat, BUTTER surveys the raw ambition of Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), the wife of Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell), Iowa's long-reigning champion butter carver. For 15 years, Laura has relished he... more
Cirkus Columbia
Bosnia , 2010 , 113 min. Set in Bosnia in the early 1990s, Danis Tanovic’s period drama explores the uncertainty of a country on the brink of war through the metaphor of a divided family. Diviko Buntic returns home after 20 years to face an estranged wife, a son he never knew, and a past that’s at odds with his future.... more
The Color Wheel
USA , 2011 , 83 min. MUST END Thursday May 31st! Digital presentation - The Color Wheel is the story of JR, an increasingly transient aspiring news anchor, as she forces her disappointing younger brother Colin to embark on a road trip to move her belongings out of her professor-turned-lover’s apartment. P... more
The Conquest
France , 2011 , 105 min. Starts Fri, Jan 27th at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax Director Xavier Durringer’s daring political drama depicts French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s dramatic rise to power and the simultaneous loss of his wife, who leaves him for another man just as he’s being elected to office. Denis Podalydè... more
Coriolanus
United Kingdom , 2011 , 122 min. Making his directorial debut, Ralph Fiennes stars as Shakespeare's deeply flawed Roman military hero in a disturbing update now set amid 21st-century guerilla insurgencies and the incessant blare of cable TV news. With Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave.... more
Curling
Canada , 2010 , 96 min. Denis Côte’s chilling drama is set on the frozen plains of Québec, where Jean-François Sauvageau protects his preteen daughter, Julyvonne, from the world outside by isolating her. But both have their secrets, and if Jean-François doesn’t face the world he so fears, he may lose Julyvonne forever.... more
Dance Town
South Korea , 2010 , 95 min. The final installment of Korean writer-director Jeon Kyu-hwan’s Town Trilogy, Dance Town tells the story of a couple defecting to South Korea. When Man-il is caught and detained by authorities, his wife escapes alone; she tries to start life anew.... more
A Dangerous Method
United Kingdom , 2011 , 99 min. The famous rift between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung has fascinated psychiatrists and historians for decades—not least because they shared a patient who was also Jung's lover. The ever-provocative David Cronenberg (The Fly) brings it all to life, with Viggo Mortensen as Freud.... more
Daughters of the Dust
USA , 1991 , 112 min. Julie Dash's evocative 1991 portrait of three generations of proud Gullah women—the descendants of slaves living in isolation off the South Carolina coast—is at once a study of family conflict and a vivid history lesson about the impending loss, in 1902, of vital cultural traditions.... more
The Day He Arrives
South Korea , 2011 , 79 min. South Korean director Hong Sang-soo provides a self-referential, seriocomic portrait of a brawling, drunken, desperate film director in crisis, combining elements of 8 1/2 with the man-in-a-wheel repetitions of Groundhog Day.... more
The Descendants
USA , 2011 , 110 min. Special Matinee Engagement – The Descendants – 1:45pm daily through March 29th Luckily for you fans of the Alexander Payne/Oscar-winning Hawaiian family drama, THE DESCENDANTS, will now be playing a special matinee engagement at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax. The Descendantsmore

The Destiny of Lesser Animals
Ghana , 2011 , 89 min. Part crime drama, part personal quest, Deron Albright's first feature focuses on a Ghanian police inspector whose fondest wish is to return to the United States a decade after being deported. First, however, he’ll need to extract himself from the series of intrigues in which he’s entangled.... more

The Dish and The Spoon
USA , 2010 , 90 min. In Alison Bagnall’s often humorous, always poignant indie drama, a hysterical wife seeks revenge on her straying husband by forming an unlikely friendship with a vulnerable British boy. Rising stars Greta Gerwig and Olly Alexander turn in utterly luminous performances.... more

Drifting States
Canada , 2005 , 91 min. Low-budget but highly charged, stark but saturated, Denis Côté’s feature debut is a sharply rendered portrait of alienation. Christian is a man in trouble—occupying a no-man’s land between compassion and violence, escape and acceptance, in which tensions run high and hope runs low.... more

The Dynamiter
USA , 2011 , 73 min. In rural Mississippi, teenaged Robbie cares for his elderly grandmother and young half-brother while his absentee mother sends the occasional postcard. The return of older brother Lucas threatens the little stability this makeshift family has—and it’s up to Robbie to defend it... more

Eighty Letters
Czech Republic , 2011 , 75 min. Based on an incident from his own life, Václav Kadrnka's close study of a determined woman seeking permission to leave 1980s Communist Czechoslovakia with her teenage son for Britain, where her defector-husband awaits, pays homage to all who quietly resist totalitarianism.... more

ELIMINATE: Archie Cookson
United Kingdom , 2011 , 91 min. Failed spy and defeated family man Archie Cookson survives an assassination attempt at his office only because he is passed out drunk; so begins this quiet and darkly humorous spy thriller.... more

Entanglement
Poland , 2011 , 128 min. Facing a murder case with only unlikely suspects and no motives, Cracow-based prosecutor Agata Szacka stumbles upon the skeletons in the closet of the former Communist regime. Polish director Jacek Bromski adapts his thriller from a crime novel in which few are truly innocent.... more

The Fairy
France , 2011 , 94 min. Featuring slapstick and sparse dialogue, this engaging frolic stylistically resembles the greats of the silent-film era. Dom, a hotel night clerk, finds himself granted three wishes by newly arrived guest Fiona, a self-proclaimed fairy. He asks for a scooter and enough petrol for life—but then what?... more

Familiar Grounds
Canada , 2011 , 98 min. Québécois writer-director Stéphane Lafleur (Continental, A Film Without Guns, SDFF30) finds plenty of humor in the trials of an endearingly dysfunctional family—a grumpy old father, a bumbling son, a gloomy daughter, and her dimwitted spouse.... more

Fear of Falling
Poland , 2011 , 90 min. Tomek’s dark past catches up with him when he gets a call from the psychiatric hospital in his hometown: his estranged father has just been admitted, compelling Tomek to return home in an attempt to restore a father-son bond long lost. Polish director Bartosz Konopka shows great promise... more

Food and the Maiden
Japan , 2010 , 75 min. From first-time Japanese writer-director Minoru Kurimura comes this simultaneously haunting and charming exploration of the neuroses surrounding nourishment. Three interweaving plots show how the main characters’ troubles are as much about relationships as mealtimes... more

The FP
USA , 2011 , 83 min. Special Late-Night Engagement MUST END Thursday, March 22nd at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax Digital presentation - In a dystopian future, a relentless turf war rages. Two rival gangs feud for control of rural wasteland Frazier Park ('The FP') in the deadly arena of competitive dance-f... more

Gandu
India , 2010 , 87 min. With the nickname of Asshole, the titular character in this raw exemplar of anti-Bollywood realism serves as a punching bag to all around him. Initially, Gandu finds escape in rap music—but soon escape itself becomes a trap in this fearless, frenetic vision of modern vice in India.... more

Ghost in the Shell
Japan , 1995 , 83 min. Seamlessly merging traditional cel animation with the latest in computer-graphic technology, this stunning sci-fi spectacle broke ground in 1995 with its emphasis on detailed artistic expression and a storyline of unprecedented complexity.... more

Good Bye
Iran , 2011 , 104 min. Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof remains under house arrest in Tehran (he “propagandized” against the regime), but this dramatic cry for freedom has reached the West—a compelling portrait of a disbarred lawyer named Noori who seeks to leave a country where women are treated “like ghosts.”... more

Green
USA , 2011 , 73 min. Writer-director-costar Sophia Takal’s unflinching exploration of triangulated romance follows Genevieve and Sebastian from Brooklyn to a remote farm in the South, where they form an easy friendship with their neighbor, Robin. But suspicion and jealousy soon set in.... more

The Green
USA , 2011 , 90 min. Steven Williford's contemporary drama unfolds in a quiet Connecticut town where a gay high-school teacher (Jason Butler Harner) is accused of molesting a student—fomenting crises for him, his partner (Glee's Cheyenne Jackson), their lesbian lawyer (Julia Ormond), and the outraged locals.... more

Haunters
South Korea , 2010 , 100 min. Cho-in (Gang Dong-won) has the power to control anyone he can see—with the exception of his doppelgänger, Kyu-nam. When Cho-in tries to rob the shop where Kyu-nam works, an epic chase begins that will end only when one man is left standing. Kim Min-suk directs this crisply satisfying Korean thriller... more

The High Life
China , 2010 , 96 min. Documentary filmmaker Zhao Dayong makes his fiction debut with this bleak but absorbing look at a cross-section of Chinese urban life. Zhao’s genius for capturing precisely the vivid details of a decaying slum stands in sharp contrast to his shifting perspective on modern-day morality.... more

Hospitalite
Japan , 2010 , 95 min. Koji Fukada’s delightful Hospitalité tells the story of a man who turns the quiet life of the Kobayashi family upside down when he comes to work in their print shop. Not merely an outrageous farce, the film also smartly explores—and critiques—many Japanese cultural norms.... more

The House
Slovak Republic , 2011 , 97 min. The crusty Slovakian father in Zuzana Liová's satirically laced drama debut dreams of building a house for each of his two daughters on the family's plot of land—but the girls, of course, have other plans. Leading man Miroslav Krobot is simultaneously a pain in the neck and a joy to behold.... more

Jeff Who Lives at Home
USA , 2011 , 83 min. Mumblecore masters Jay and Mark Duplass set their new comedy about two mismatched brothers in Baton Rouge. Upstanding Pat (Ed Helms) suspects his wife of cheating, so he brings Jeff (Jason Segel)—the dreamy pot smoker living in Mom's basement—along for some goofy detective work.... more

Joanna
Poland , 2010 , 105 min. The eponymous heroine of Feliks Falk's World War II drama, set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, is a bright and wary young Pole (Urszula Grabowska) whose quest for simple survival is turned inside out when she discovers a seven-year-old Jewish girl hiding in a church—and decides to harbor the child.... more

King of Devil's Island
Norway , 2011 , 116 min. Filmmaker Marius Holst retells the heartbreaking tale of a bloody 1915 uprising at Norway's notorious Bastøy Residential School, where wayward teenagers were subjected to beatings, sexual abuse, and dehumanization. Holst's mostly nonprofessional young actors are astonishing in a prison drama... more

Kinyarwanda
Rwanda , 2011 , 100 min. MUST END Thurs, Jan 22nd Winner of the Starz People's Choice Award for Narrative Feature - SDFF34 35mm presentation - In the genocide that swept though Rwanda in 1994, the Hutu ethnic majority killed almost a million Tutsis—a bloody tragedy that was the subject of the 2004 Oscar nomi... more

Le Havre
Finland , 2011 , 103 min. Le Havre looks like a 1960s B-movie, but its storyline is wholly contemporary. Finland’s official entry for best foreign-language film at next year’s Academy Awards offers a light-hearted look at shoeshine man Marcel’s efforts to provide safe harbor for a young African immigrant.... more

Leaving
Czech Republic , 2011 , 94 min. Acclaimed absurdist playwright Václav Havel’s first dramatic feature, Leaving, follows the King Lear-like chancellor of an unnamed country as he relinquishes power to a sleazy archrival. Havel denies autobiographical connections, though echoes of his political career abound.... more

Like Crazy After Party at Beta
USA , 2011 , 88 min. Drake Doremus fashions the heartbreaking tale—already dubbed the “Love Story for a new generation”—of a British college student and an American classmate whose passionate love affair is put to the test when she violates her visa and gets deported.... more

Loft
Netherlands , 2010 , 110 min. An architect gives keys to a new apartment to four friends on the condition that their wives must not find out. When one of them finds a dead body handcuffed to the loft’s oft-used bed, the whodunit that ensues brings out their worst instincts.... more

Lord Byron
USA , 2011 , 90 min. When Byron (Paul Batiste) isn’t with one of his many girlfriends, you’ll find him smoking dope at his ex-wife’s house—until the day he’s inspired by a television preacher to become a monk. Through twists and turns, Byron eventually finds exactly what he seeks from life in Zack Godshall’s dark comedy... more

Love Like Poison
France , 2010 , 93 min. In this sensitive French drama, teenager Anna returns from boarding school to her Breton village to find herself in a broken home. Surrounded by a dying grandfather, a hysterical mother, an absent father, and a conflicted priest, she navigates sexual temptation and religious hypocrisy alike.... more

Man Without a Cell Phone
France , 2011 , 78 min. In Palestinian-Israeli director Sameh Zoabi's humorous yet politically acute first feature, an aimless dreamer in his twenties (Razi Shawahdeh) is reluctantly drawn into the fray when his ferociously committed father (Basem Loulou) decides that an Israeli cellphone tower is poisoning the residents.... more

Maria My Love
USA , 2011 , 99 min. Jasmine McGlade Chazelle's witty feature debut examines the unlikely friendship between a young café waitress who's grieving the death of her mother and a strangely insightful maternal figure (Hollywood veteran Karen Black)—who also happens to be a compulsive hoarder.... more

Martino's Summer
Italy , 2011 , 87 min. The recipient of this year’s Maria and Tommaso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award, Massimo Natale’s feature debut explores the father-son bond that develops between a young Italian boy and an American Army captain as they focus on the important things in life: love, family, and surfing.... more

Melancholia
Denmark , 2011 , 130 min. MUST END Thurs Jan 26th 35mm presentation - In this beautiful movie about the end of the world, Justine (Kirsten Dunst, Best Actress Award winner at the Cannes International Film Festival) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård of "True Blood" and Straw Dogs) are celebrating their marriage ... more

Mother Country
USA , 2010 , 88 min. What begins as Boyz n the Hood for the 21st century soon transforms into a retelling of On the Road, with urban youth standing in for the Beat Generation. When Dwight accidentally kills a young girl in a failed drive-by shooting, he flees the scene, and his past... more

Mozart Town
South Korea , 2008 , 90 min. South Korean writer-director Jeon Kyu-hwan’s 2008 debut was the first in the Town Trilogy (appearing as a whole in SDFF34), which examines themes of urban alienation and desperation. Sara is a pianist who sees Seoul through the eyes of a tourist, while the city’s own residents struggle daily.... more

Mud Flower
Mexico , 2011 , 100 min. In this tough-as-nails drama from Mexico, Augusto leaves his wife and throws himself headlong into the underbelly of Tampico on a crazed search for pretty young orphan Marlene—who has, not entirely unwillingly, entered into prostitution.... more

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Turkey , 2011 , 157 min. Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, SDFF31) returns to Denver with this deliberately paced legal and medical drama; centering on a single act of murder, it plays out as a challenging yet rewarding Dostoevskian meditation on good, evil, and human malaise.... more

One. Two. One.
Iran , 2011 , 79 min. Iranian painter-turned-filmmaker Mania Akbari explores the divide between body and soul against the wholly contemporary background of electronic communication, where love letters are composed on cell phones and close encounters seem far removed for a once-pretty girl who has been disfigured.... more

Outrage
Japan , 2010 , 109 min. MUST END Thurs, Jan 12th at the Denver FilmCenter 35mm presentation - Writer/director Takeshi Kitano (The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi, Fireworks, Brother, Sonatine) returns with his latest gangland drama, Outrage. In a ruthless battle for power, several yakuza clans vie for the favor of... more

Oxygen
Belgium , 2010 , 98 min. In this observant, intimate Belgian drama, a group of young cystic fibrosis patients explore life on borrowed time. This could be relentlessly grim subject matter—but thanks to director Hans Van Nuffel, writer Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem, and a spirited cast, Oxygen has buoyancy... more

Pariah
USA , 2011 , 86 min. Writer-director Dee Rees makes her debut with the semi-autobiographical tale of a Brooklyn teenager struggling to retain her grace, tenacity, and humor while struggling with the decision to come out as a lesbian. Spike Lee serves as executive producer.... more

Patang
USA , 2011 , 93 min. Raised in Chicago and schooled at Cornell, Indian-American filmmaker Prashant Bhargava spent six years making this stunning feature debut. Respect for ritual and grand visual poetry combine to create a richly textured family drama set in Ahmedabad, the site of India's largest annual kite festival.... more

The Piano Teacher
Austria , 2001 , 131 min. A decade after winning the grand prize at Cannes, Michael Haneke's harrowing study of a sexually repressed music professor (the brilliant Isabelle Huppert) and the teenage piano student she draws into a firestorm of mutual obsession continues to haunt audiences around the world.... more

Policeman
Israel , 2011 , 105 min. Israeli writer-director Nadav Lapid’s gripping feature debut examines the lives of counterterrorist unit members and Jewish terrorists prior to their inevitable face-off. In the aftermath, Policeman eschews genre tropes in favor of a meditation on the nature of machismo.... more

Postales
USA , 2010 , 80 min. In Colorado-based filmmaker Josh Hyde’s charming feature-narrative debut, cultures collide when a young American girl and a streetwise Peruvian boy meet in Cuzco. Dirt-poor, he sells postcards on the plaza; she’s a privileged tourist. Will romance break the barriers between them—or vice-versa?... more

Princess
Finland , 2010 , 100 min. In his first dramatic feature, Finnish documentarian Arto Halonen tells the real-life tale of Anna Lappaleinen, a charming psychotic who imagined herself a displaced royal with connections to all the crowned heads of Europe—and who survived the sometimes reckless fashions of post-WWII psychiatry.... more

Record Future
Japan , 2010 , 93 min. With roots in the Japanese theater, Kentaro Kishi makes his cinematic debut with this dreamlike narrative that examines the connections between past, present, and future through the eyes of characters Sachi and Osamu, who dream of running their own schoolhouse.... more

Rikyu
Japan , 1989 , 135 min. In Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Rikyu, a shogun wants to learn the tea ceremony. He’s a warrior, a man of politics and ambition—and for him, the ceremony is just one more thing to conquer. Unfortunately for the shogun, though, its performance demands a whole new set of skills.... more

The Salesman
Canada , 2010 , 107 min. First time writer-director Sébastian Pilote and superb leading man Gilbert Sicotte produce an indelible, heart-rending portrait of a 67-year-old Quebecois car dealer as he faces the undoing of his deepest beliefs. The death of a salesman, we are reminded, takes many forms.... more

The Salt of Life
Italy , 2011 , 90 min. MUST END Thursday, May 10th at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax 35mm presentation - In his warm and witty follow-up to the 2010 sleeper hit Mid-August Lunch, writer-director-actor Gianni Di Gregorio has created another sparkling comedy—this time with a dash of the bittersweet. In The Salt... more

The Sandman
Switzerland , 2011 , 87 min. In this spirited, offbeat Swiss romantic comedy, bitter, foppish, 30-something Benno finds that he is turning to sand—literally. Now he must turn to neighbor Sandra, whom he hates passionately but who holds the key to his dreams, for help.... more

Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps
Switzerland , 2010 , 110 min. High in the Alps, superstitions abound. But the legend of Sennentuntschi—a doll brought to life by the devil, only to brutally murder her makers—trumps them all. Policeman Reuch will soon discover that reality in his small Swiss village is far more disturbing than any shepherd’s tale.... more

Seopyeonje
South Korea , 1993 , 112 min. Three Korean pansori singers travel by foot through the countryside, their convoluted stories revealed in a series of flashbacks. Director Im Kwon-taek began his career as a maker of commercial films; after encountering the pansori tradition, he got down to more serious work.... more

Shame
United Kingdom , 2011 , 99 min. Handsome matinee idol Michael Fassbender portrays a helpless Manhattan sex addict in director Steve McQueen's disturbing (and unblinkingly graphic) study of a man being destroyed by his own desire. Carey Mulligan is his needy sister, who comes complete with some serious baggage of her own.... more

Small, Beautifully Moving Parts
USA , 2011 , 73 min. MUST END Thursday May 31st! Digital presentation - Sarah Sparks is a freelance “technologist” who repairs everything from new computers to old-fashioned radios and considers it part of her job to interview strangers in public places about the role technology plays in their lives. When... more

Sonny Boy
Netherlands , 2010 , 132 min. Director Maria Peters dramatizes the impossible-but-true story of a middle-class Dutch wife and mother and a black Surinamese immigrant who fall in love, have a child, and navigate the terrors of Nazi-occupied Holland—all the while harboring Jews in their attic.... more

Surrogate Valentine
USA , 2011 , 75 min. Goh Nakamura cowrote, composed the soundtrack for, and stars as himself in cowriter-director Dave Boyle’s warm, funny, and ultimately stirring relationship comedy about a small-time San Fransisco musician with much to confront and little to lose.... more

The Tested
USA , 2010 , 107 min. Russell Costanzo's gritty first feature is a New York street tragedy about three people trying to cope with an African-American teenager's shooting death—his grief-stricken, rage-fueled mother; his confused 16-year-old brother; and the guilt-ridden white cop who killed him.... more

Rare Imports: The Makioka Sisters
Japan , 1983 , 140 min. BRAND NEW 35MM PRINT! The fading fortunes of the titular siblings take center stage in Kon Ichikawa’s 1983 adaptation of Junichiro Tanizaki’s acclaimed novel. It’s 1938, and the Makiokas seek to marry off Yukiko while struggling with familial conflict and relinquishing their hold on the past... more

The Turin Horse
Hungary , 2011 , 146 min. In the strangely hypnotic, metaphorically rich film Hungarian director Belá Tarr says will be his last, a weather-beaten 19th-century farmer and his daughter struggle against the elements for survival, bedeviled by an enigmatic horse that just may have once encountered Friedrich Nietzsche.... more

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
USA , 2001 , 104 min. On April 3, 2002, The Starz FilmCenter opened its doors for the first time as the year-round home of the Denver Film Society with the film Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.... more

Time to Spare
Netherlands , 2011 , 100 min. In a tragicomedy of errors, Dutch writer-director Job Gosschalk focuses on a pair of devoted siblings—a gay music teacher in his 40s and his doomed younger sister—as they search for romantic love, suffer betrayals, and, in the end, find a tender sort of grace.... more

Tyrannosaur
United Kingdom , 2010 , 93 min. In actor Paddy Considine’s impressive filmmaking debut, an angry widower tangles with a vulnerable Christian woman, who meets his violent outbursts with compassion. Stellar performances anchor this gritty, character-driven drama.... more

The Watching Hour: Vacation!
USA , 2010 , 90 min. Screens as part of The Watching Hour Friday & Saturday, January 11th & 12th at 10pm! Digital presentation - Ah, summertime in America. Good friends, good cocktails, good times, lots of sex…and death? What starts as a (somewhat) wholesome summer vacation soon turns into a hipster’s tw... more

Volcano
Iceland , 2011 , 99 min. Writer-director Rúnar Rúnarsson describes his feature debut as a “coming-of-age story about a 67-year-old man.” Against the backdrop of an Icelandic coastal town decimated by a volcano in the 1970s, this understated but moving drama examines existential loss.... more

The Water at the End of the World
Argentina , 2010 , 84 min. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, Adriana asks sister Laura to take her to the southern tip of Argentina. Laura’s broke, so when she meets Martín, an alcoholic accordion player, she enlists his help in fundraising schemes—until their two-way relationship becomes triangular.... more

We Need to Talk About Kevin
United Kingdom , 2011 , 112 min. MUST END May 3rd at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax Digital Presentation - A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller from director/co-writer Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar), We Need to Talk About Kevin explores the fractious relationship between a mother and her evil so... more

Years Later
Mexico , 2011 , 95 min. At age 35, Andrés discovers that the grandfather he thought had died before his birth is alive and well in a remote Galician village. Impulsively he walks out on his job and fiancée in Mexico City and flies to Spain to trace his past.... more

Young Goethe in Love
Germany , 2010 , 100 min. “It’s more than truth. It’s poetry,” explains the romantic heroine of The Sorrows of Young Werther. The same can be said of Philipp Stölzl’s Young Goethe in Love, a sumptuous period romance about the early experiences that led Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to write the epistolary novel... more

Yukiko
Japan , 2011 , 75 min. Shot in Paris by Japanese filmmaker Haruka Motoi, this quiet character study centers on the bond women forge in overcoming life’s hardships. After walking out on her boyfriend, the titular character faces surprise upon surprise as she tries to make her way in the foreign city of lights.... more

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