Films & Schedules - G

Garbage Dreams explores the rapidly disappearing way of life of the Zaballeen, Cairo's "garbage people."

Garbage Dreams looks at the hopes and dreams of a group of teenage boys whose livelihoods wholly depend on trash. As members of the Zaballeen, a Coptic Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo, they inhabit a small village constructed almost entirely of the garbage they sort for a living. For generations, Cairo has depended on “the garbage people” to collect their trash. The Zaballeen survive by recycling the city’s waste—80 percent of all the garbage they collect—creating what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. In 2003, the city decided to replace the Zabelleen with private, multinational garbage disposal companies. Their giant waste trucks now line the streets, but they are contractually obligated to recycle only 20 percent of what they collect, leaving the rest to rot in giant landfills. The Zabelleen community is finding their way of life disappearing before their eyes.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by World Affairs Council of Oregon.

82 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Middle Eastern.

The story of a supermarket security guard's obsession with a late-shift janitor.

Jara (Horacio Camandule) spends his nights as a security guard on the graveyard shift at a Montevideo supermarket in stoic silence—eating pastries, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the confines of his world go by on a bank of TV monitors. Something stirs in Jara, though, when he catches sight of a cleaning woman (Leonor Svarcas) in the fluorescent glare of the empty supermarket floor. Too shy to speak, he begins following the woman after work, decoding her secrets while continuing to deny his own. Will the gentle giant ever summon the courage to approach her? Set against the dreary background of economic recession and distinguished by Camandule’s heart-wrenching performance, this nearly silent one-way love story—which the director himself considers “a subversion of the classic … romantic comedy”—earned three awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear and the Best Debut Film Prizes.

First Feature Film.

84 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino.

The Girl On The Train tells the true story of a young woman who claimed to be the victim of an anti-Semitic attack on a Paris suburban train.

A young woman, Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne), reports that skinheads attacked her, seemingly for being a Jew. The incident becomes a media sensation and attorney Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), an old friend of Jeanne’s mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve), takes the case. The incident and its aftermath, drawn from real events, formed the core of Jean-Marie Besset’s play on which the film is based, but for Téchiné, the dramatic entanglements provide an opportunity to explore the complex family and social relationships that surround and define his characters. Notions of class, ethnicity, and who’s in and who’s out in contemporary France course through the film, offering a provocative reflection on the creation of identity at a time of ever-increasing social tension.

Selected Filmography: The Bronte Sisters (79), I Don’t Kiss (91), My Favorite Season (93), Alice and Martin (98), Changing Times (04), The Witness (07).

Sponsored by TV5MONDE and with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

110 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language, Jewish.

Based on the best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the tale of a disgraced journalist trying to crack a 40-year-old murder that may have been the work of a still-at-large serial killer.

An international crime thriller involving corporate intrigue, serial murder, and powerful Old World dynasties, Oplev’s taut film is based on the international best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson and will have you on the edge of your seat. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a disgraced reporter about to go to prison. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is the mysterious girl of the title with a checkered past and a sideline in computer hacking. Together they are hired to investigate a 40-year-old disappearance at the request of eccentric, 82-year-old industralist Henrik Vanger. As they dig deep into the secrets of the Vanger family they begin to uncover a dark and bloody history that someone wants to keep hidden at any cost.

Filmography: Portland (96), Defense (03), We Shall Overcome (07).

Sponsored by Alaska Airlines.

152 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Literature.

Set in the 1930s Manchurian desert, three Korean men—a bounty hunter, a gang leader, and a train robber—meet aboard a train and engage in a chase across Manchuria to take possession of a mysterious map.

“One might call director Kim Ji-woon’s stunning homage to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone a kimchi Western. The film boasts masterful high-speed action like you’ve never seen before: think Stagecoach meets high-wire Jackie Chan meets The Road Warrior. Tongue firmly in cheek, this action-comedy is set on the Japanese-occupied Manchurian steppe in the 1930s as a bizarre trio of Korean exiles—The Good (a sharp-shooting bounty hunter in a duster), The Bad (a wickedly handsome knife-throwing gang leader) and The Weird (a two-fisted gun-slinging thief)—get their hands on a treasure map and then set off in hot pursuit of buried Qing dynasty loot. Kim’s exhilarating, escalating mayhem pits our three antiheroes against fast-moving trains, horses, trucks, motorcycles, Jeeps, explosions, Japanese and Chinese soldiers, and Russian bandits. And, after all that, their final, existential showdown does not disappoint.”—AFI Fest.

Selected Filmography: A Tale of Two Sisters (03), Bittersweet Life (05).

130 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Asian.