Academy Award Winning International Films
|
Closely Watched Trains
1967 Winner. At a village railway
station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling
dispatcher's apprentice longs to liberate himself
from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the
resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks
on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery,
encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism,
and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry
and tender, Closely Watched Trains is a
masterpiece of human observation and one of the
best-loved films of the Czech New Wave.
|
The Lives of Others
2006 Winner. Set in East Berlin in
1984, a secret service agent assigned to monitor a
playwright and his girlfriend begins to question his
assignment and his loyalty to the government.
|
The Counterfeiters
2007 Winner. The
Counterfeiters tells the true story of Salomon
Sorowitsch, a swindler who made a name for himself as
Berlin's "King of the Counterfeiters." However, his
life of women and easy money is cut short when he's
arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp.
With the German army on the verge of bankruptcy,
Sorowitsch makes a sobering deal with his captors.
|
|
Water
2006 Nominee. A Hindu widow in 1938
could throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre,
marry her husband's younger brother or live in
poverty and self-denial from then on. When
eight-year-old Chuyia is widowed, she is sent to a
home in the Holy City of Varanasi where Hindu widows
live in penitence. Her feisty presence affects the
other residents, forcing each to confront their faith
and society's prejudices, especially a young woman
who has fallen in love with a follower of Gandhi.
|
Tsotsi
2005 Winner. A young man running
with a criminal gang on the streets of Johannesburg,
Tsotsi - a nickname meaning thug - is immersed in a
world of violence that seems to leave him unaffected,
until he discovers an infant in the backseat of a car
he has stolen.
|
The Sea Inside
2004 Winner. Ramón Sampedro wants to
end his life because a diving accident 28 years
before that turned him into a quadriplegic. Gené is a
friend who works with a "Right to Die" organization
who introduces Ramón to Julia, a lawyer he hopes will
help him persuade the courts to let him end his own
life.
|
|
Burmese Harp
1956 Nominee. An Imperial Japanese
Army regiment surrenders to British forces in Burma
at the close of World War II and finds harmony
through song. A private, thought to be dead,
disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and stumbles
upon spiritual enlightenment.
|
Hero
2002 Nominee. With supernatural
skill and no fear a nameless soldier embarks on a
mission of revenge against the fearsome army that
massacred his people. Now, to achieve the justice he
seeks, he must take on the empire's most ruthless
assassins and reach the enemy he has sworn to defeat.
|
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2000 Winner.Set in 19th-century
China, two master warriors are faced with their
greatest challenge when the treasured Green Destiny
sword is stolen. A young aristocratic woman prepares
for an arranged marriage, but soon reveals her
superior fighting talents and her romantic past. As
each warrior battles for justice, they come
face-to-face with their worst enemy, and the enduring
power of love.
|
|
Downfall
2004 Nominee. Takes you into
Hitler's bunker, in 1945, during the brutal and
harrowing last days of the Third Reich. Seen through
the eyes of Hitler's infamous secretary Gertraud
(Traudl) Junge, optimism crumbles into grim
realization and terror as it becomes clear that
Germany's defeat is inevitable. As the Russian army
circles the city, the dimly lit halls of the
underground refuge become an execution chamber for
the Führer and his closest advisors.
|
The Tin Drum
1979 Winner. Based on the classic
novel by Gunter Grass, A young boy refuses to grow up
and continually beats a tin drum to combat his
feelings of desperation and anger during the rise of
the Third Reich. Dark, disturbing and controversial,
the film has been banned in parts of Canada and the
U.S..
|
The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis
1971 Winner.Set in Italy in 1938,
when Mussolini's anti-Semitic edicts began to isolate
the Jews from their communities. Among them were the
Finzi-Continis, an aristocratic Jewish family forced
for the first time to acknowledge the world beyond
its fenced garden.
|
|
All About My Mother
1999 Winner. Manuela is the perfect
mother. A hard-working nurse, she's built a
comfortable life for herself and her teenage son. But
when tragedy strikes and her son is killed in a car
accident, her world crumbles.
|
Indochine
1992 Winner.Set in French Indochina
in the 1930s as the Vietnamese begin to rebel against
French colonialism. Dramatizes the last years of
French rule through the relationship between
plantation owner Éliane, French by birth but born and
raised in Indochina, and her adopted daughter
Camille, an orphaned Annamese princess who becomes a
Vietnamese revolutionary and representative at the
Geneva Conference after having a child by French
officer Jean-Baptiste, Éliane's past lover.
|
Cinema Paradisio
1989 Nominee. A young boy in a small
Italian village is befriended by the projectionist at
the movie theater, the Cinema Paradiso. As the boy
grows up, he learns to love films, and is encouraged
by his good friend to pursue his dream of one day
making movies.
|
|
Babette's Feast
1987 Winner. With the mysterious
arrival of Babette, a refugee from France's civil
war, life for two pious sisters and their tiny hamlet
begins to change. Before long, Babette has convinced
them to try something other than boiled codfish and
ale bread-- a gourmet French meal! Her feast
scandalizes the elders, except for the visiting
General. Just who is this strangely talented Babette,
who has terrified this pious town with the prospect
of losing their souls for enjoying too much earthly
pleasure?
|
Antonia's Line
1995 Winner. A remarkable portrait
of a family and a community, of mothers and
daughters, and of one indomitable woman. Earthy,
sexy, romantic, filled with laughter and warmth, it's
a joyous celebration of simple pleasures and enduring
passions.
|
Burnt by the Sun
1994 Winner. Nikita Mikhalkov
directs and stars as Colonel S. Kotov, a hero of the
Revolution, who is spending the summer in the country
with his young daughter (Mikhalkov's real-life
daughter), his wife and her eccentric family. But
when his wife's childhood love suddenly appears, the
idyllic summer day takes a surprising turn. A lyrical
film filled with beauty and warmth, it is also an
indelible account of a man dedicated to family and
fatherland, cruelly destroyed by political paranoia.
|
|
The Official Story
1985 Winner. An Argentine teacher
lives in blissful ignorance of the evils perpetrated
by her country's government. Over time, she begins to
suspect that her adopted daughter may have been the
child of a murdered political prisoner. When she
attempts to unearth the truth, her investigation
reveals levels of political corruption so abhorrent
that the illusions of her past life are irrevocably
shattered.
|
Mephisto
1981 Winner. An actor of the Art
Theatre Company of Hamburg, who subordinates
everything to his success, befriends a principal
figure in the Nazi power machinery and is drawn into
the poisonous circle of evil from which he can no
longer escape.
|
The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie
1972 Winner. An upper-class sextet
sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts
continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of
events both actual and imagined.
|
|
Fanny and Alexander
1983 Winner. The story is set in the
early twentieth century in Sweden and deals with a
young boy named Alexander, his sister Fanny, and
their well-to-do family. In addition to its themes of
Christianity, repentance, and submission to
authority, the film deals with love, estrangement,
ghosts, and the paranormal, as well as the more
common Bergman theme of existentialism.
|
Amarcord
1974 Winner. Memories of episodes
about love, sex, politics, family life and growing up
in a small Italian town in the 1930's.
|
8 1/2
1963 Winner. Fellini's
autobiographical film about a famous film director
who loses his inspiration in the midst of making a
film.
|
|
The Virgin Spring
1960 Winner. A peasant girl is raped
and murdered in 14th century Sweden. When her killers
seek shelter in her father's house, he kills them to
avenge her death. Soon a spring appears from where
the girl was killed and her father sees this as a
sign from above.
|
Rashomon
1951 Special Award. Set in the
Middle Ages, the nature of truth and subjective
reality are probed in a series of flashbacks from
four viewpoints to present the case history of a
man's murder and the rape of his wife by a bandit.
Read the story on which it was based.
|
Black Orpheus
1959 Winner. Story based on the
legend of Orpheus and Eurydice set against the
colorful background of the carnival in Rio de
Janiero. With its magnificent color photography and
lively soundtrack, this film brought the infectious
bossa nova beat to the United States.
|
|
Forbidden Games
1952 Special Award.A timeless
evocation of the loss of innocence, Rene Clement's
devastating Forbidden games tells the story of a
young orphan and her friend forced to fend for
themselves in World War II France.
|
The Battle of Algiers
1966 Nominee. Focuses on the
harrowing events of 1957, a key year in Algeria's
struggle for independence from France. Recreates the
tumultuous Algerian uprising against the occupying
French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both
sides, the French torture prisoners for information
and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest
for independence.
|
War and Peace
1968 Winner. A painstakingly
detailed adaptation of the Tolstoy novel which
follows the interconnected lives of a group of
Russian aristocrats from 1805 to 1812, including
Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
|
|
La Strada
1956 Winner. Directed by Federico
Fellini, the story of a fragile girl who falls in
love with a brutal circus performer she was sold to
by her mother
|
Nights of Cabiria
1957 Winner. Cabiria, a prostitute,
throws herself into endless love affairs with the
frantic persistence of a trapped bird, dashing body
and soul against the vain hope of securing marriage
and a happy family life.
|
The Bicycle Thief
1949 Special Award. Story of an
unemployed man and his son in war devastated Rome.
The father finds a job pasting up posters, work
requiring a bicycle to get around. The bicycle is
stolen; panic stricken at being unable to recover his
bicycle and at the prospect of losing his job, the
father is compelled to steal a bicycle, only to be
caught and humiliated in front of his son.
|
|
The Chorus
2004 Nominee. Unemployed music
teacher Clement Mathieu becomes the supervisor at a
boarding school for the rehabilitation of minors.
Dismayed by the repressive administration, he works
to positively transform the students' lives through
music.
|
The Man Without a Past
2002 Nominee. After a man is beaten
and declared dead, he suddenly sits up and walks out
of the hospital on his own. Determined to start his
life over in a new town and unable to remember his
name or anything about his past, he becomes involved
with a mother and her sons. Everything seems good
until his past comes back to haunt him.
|
Divided We Fall
2000 Nominee. During World War II
and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslavakia, a couple,
Josef and Marie, decide to hide a young Jewish
neighbor in their small apartment. They keep getting
a visit from their neighbor, Horst, who is a German
sympathizer and has his eye on Marie. When she
rejects his advances he seeks revenge by trying to
move a Nazi clerk into their home, forcing the couple
to tell a lie that will change their lives forever.
|
|
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
2001 Nominee. An arrogant British
Army captain forces a bet on a group of farmers. If
they can win a cricket match against the army team,
they will not have to pay the tax called lagaan for
three years.
|
Amélie
2001 Nominee. Amélie is a young
woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood;
misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amélie
didn't attend school with other children, but spent
most of her time in her room, where she developed a
keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Despite
all this, Amélie has grown into a healthy and
beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a
whimsical, romantic nature. She decides to step into
the lives of others around her to help them out.
|
Nowhere In Africa
2002 Winner.Critically acclaimed,
this is the award winning true tale of a Jewish
family who flee the Nazi regime in 1938 and learns to
cope with their new life, and each other, on a remote
farm in Kenya.
|
|
The Last Metro
1980 Nominee. A stylish and poignant
film about Jewish director Lucas Steiner (Heinz
Bennent), who is forced to hide in the basement of
his theater during the Nazi occupation while his wife
(Catherine Deneuve) stars in its latest production.
Romantic tensions mount when she and her leading man
(Gérard Depardieu) begin to fall in love with each
other. At the same time, a pro-Nazi theater critic
ensconces himself in the theater causing stress to
the entire cast
|
Life is Beautiful
1998 Winner. A charming but bumbling
waiter who's gifted with a colorful imagination and
an irresistible sense of humor has won the heart of
the woman he loves and has created a beautiful life
for his young family. Then that life is threatened by
World War II.
|
The Shop on Main Street
1965 Winner. In 1942, Tono and his
wife are struggling because of his antipathy towards
the fascist regime. His brother-in-law, the local
fuehrer, chooses Tono to oversee a button shop owned
by a sweet, harmless Jewish widow, Mrs. Lautman. When
the Jews are ordered deported, the well-meaning Tono
decides to shield her from the Nazis.
|
|
Salaam Bombay
1988 Nominee. Krisha, a ten year old
boy, has been abandoned in Bombay by his mother. He
tries to earn money to go home while he lives in the
streets.
|
Farewell My Concubine
1993 Nominee. Story that spans more
than 50 years in the lives of two men at the Peking
Opera, friends since childhood, and the woman who
comes between them. Also an absorbing drama of the
period in Chinese history from the warlord era
through the Cultural Revolution.
|
The Wedding Banquet
1993 Nominee. Comedy about the
age-old conflict between parents and their children.
In New York, the Taiwanese half of a gay couple hopes
to end his parents' matchmaking by announcing that
he's engaged. What he doesn't count on is that
they'll fly in to meet the bride and plan the
nuptials.
|
|
Eat Drink Man Woman
1994 Nominee. A retired master chef
and widower is worried about the future of his three
unmarried daughters who are skeptical about marriage.
Yet he himself surprises them with his secret love
affair with a young woman many years his junior.
|
Children of Heaven
1998 Nominee. A young boy, Ali,
loses his sister Zahra's school shoes. In order to
stay out of trouble, the two come up with a plan to
share Ali's shoes, but they must keep it a secret
from their parents.
|
Central Station
1998 Nominee. When a young boy
witnesses his mother's accidental death, a lonely,
retired school-teacher reluctantly takes the child
under her wing.
|
