alec-guimness-films's - Favourites List

My Dog Tulip is a funny and heart-warming look at the unique bond that occurs between a dog and it's master. Created by filmmakers Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, My Dog Tulip is a pioneering animated feature, the first to be entirely hand-drawn and painted utilising paperless computer technology.

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From a war-torn refugee camp to the deceptively idyllic Danish countryside, two fragile worlds are inextricably linked by conflict and violence. Anton is a doctor whose work bridges the divide between these two dramatically contrasted lands and who must confront an unavoidable moral dilemma.

His son Elias, the victim of school bullies, forms a friendship with the troubled Christian, but this soon transforms into a dangerous alliance.

The stand-out film of the 2011 Berlin Film Festival and winner of the Golden Bear is a suspenseful and intelligent drama that details the manipulations and confrontations brought into play when a couple's marriage painfully breaks down.

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Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town cop with a confrontational personality, a rebellious sense of humour, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in international cocaine smuggling ring that has brought FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door.

However, when his enthusiastic new partner disappears, his favourite hooker attempts to blackmail him and the drug-traffickers themselves try to buy him off, sergeant Boyle finally realises that he needs to take matters into his own hands.

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A dark realistic cop series from world-famous filmmaker and former police office Olivier Marchal. Braquo (slang for Heist) follows a squad of Paris cops who exist in the blurred boundaries at the very edge of the law, often using violence and intimidation to get the job done.

The lives of these officers change radically when their squad leader, falsely accused of corruption, commits suicide. Determined to clear his name they start an investigation of their own, only to find that the police department itself stands in their way. Driven by adrenaline and a thirst for justice, they must turn their backs on the laws they're sworn to enforce if they are to uncover the truth. Facing constant danger from all sides - and with the two most likely outcomes being imprisonment or death - the stakes couldn't be higher, but that merely serves to crank up the tension in this acclaimed series.

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After the tragic passing of their well-liked teacher a school class is left shaken and fragile. A new primary teacher is appointed, the mysterious and charming Bachir Lazhar who, as each day passes, earns the trust of the class and allows them to grieve.

Lazhar's compassion has a huge impact on the most sensitive pupils, but unbeknown to them, he is also fighting his own personal battles that have left him emotionally vulnerable.

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1943, Italy: In the darkest days of the war, a young baker's apprentice suddenly murders his employer before taking to the empty midnight streets, frantically searching for someone or something... a haunting image of passion, rage and desperation.

Sixty years later: Passion seems to be missing from the life of Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzigorno), a young wife and mother of two who appears to have found some sense of domestic peace. She is not too pleased when her husband, Filippo (Filippo Nigro), insists on bringing home a confused elderly man they find wandering in the streets uttering a single name: Simone. The older man's presence and the mystery of his identity, not to mention their shared stories while baking, begin to have a profound effect on Giovanna. Meanwhile Giovanna gazes out of her apartment window to the flat opposite hers, where a handsome young bachelor Lorenzo lives. As the questions about the old man grow more and more complex, and the secrets of his past are slowly revealed, Giovanna finds herself facing a series of choices about her own life, her family, and her future - striking an eerily similar chord to the fateful choice the old man had to make some sixty years earlier.

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Based on the true story of Caroline Mathilda, the English princess who married King Christian VII of Denmark in the early 1770s, "A Royal Affair" is a bold, sumptuous tale of illicit love and political pasion on a sweeping, epic scale.

Keen to be a dutiful wife and queen, Caroline's hopes are soon dashed when she discovers the King's true madness. Turning away from the King she finds herself in the arms of the King's physician, a radical libertarian, with whom she embarks upon a passionate affair that would bring the kingdom to the brink of revolution.

Marcel and Arletty's quiet, economically but emotionally rich life is disrupted when she is diagnosed with a serious disease. At the same time, Marcel takes a young illegal immigrant under his wing.

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After spending time working with real police officers, actor-director Maiwenn turned her experiences into this film, investigating child molesters, teen prostitutes and abusive parents.

Trying to infiltrate this dangerous, murky world is a passionate, dedicated team of cops who will risk everything to uncover the truth. But as tensions rise and emotions reach boiling point some facts will become too difficult to bear...

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Single mother Collette McVeigh is a Republican living in Belfast with her mother and hardliner IRA brothers.

When she is arrested for her part in an aborted IRA bomb plot in London, an MI5 officer (Mac) offers her a choice: lose everything and go to prison for 25 years or return to Belfast to spy on her own family. With her son's life in her hands, Collette chooses to place her trust in Mac and return home, but when her brothers' secret operation is ambushed, suspicions of an informant are raised and Collette finds both herself and her family in grave danger.

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In 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay disappears from his home in Texas. Three years later he is found in Spain, disorientated and quivering with fear. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not what it seems.

Whilst he bears many of the same distinguishing marks and tattoos, the boy looks decidedly different and now speaks with a strange accent. Why doesn't the family seem to notice these glaring inconsistencies? It's only when an investigator starts asking questions that this astonishing true story takes an even stranger turn.

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Examining the close bond shared by an elderly couple when one of them begins to suffer from an illness, Amour tells a heart-rending story of sacrifice, devotion and the limits that love can drive us to.

Amour is one of the most honest, intimate and deeply affecting portraits of love ever committed to film.

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Ginger faced, caravanning enthusiast Chris (Steve Oram) wants to show his new girlfriend Tina (Alice Lowe) his world and he wants to do it his way - on a journey through the British Isles in his beloved caravan.

Up until now Tina has led a sheltered life with her over protective mother, but there are things that Chris wants her to see - the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, the Keswick Pencil Museum and the rolling countryside that accompanies these wonders in his life. But it doesn't take long for the dream to fade. Litterbugs, noisy teenagers and pre-booked caravan sites, not to mention Tina's meddling mother, soon conspire to shatter Chris's dreams and send him, and anyone who rubs him up the wrong way, over a very jagged edge...

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"The Hunt" unfolds in a small provincial town in the days leading up to Christmas. Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a forty year old divorcee, is finally getting his life under control.

He's got himself a new girlfriend, a new job and is in the process of re-building his relationship with his teenage son, Marcus. But things soon start to unravel. Nothing significant, just a slight comment here, a random lie there. And as the snow falls and the Christmas lights are lit, the lie spreads like an invisible virus. The shock and mistrust gets out of hand, and the small community suddenly finds itself in a collective state of hysteria, while Lucas fights a lonely fight for his life and dignity. "The Hunt" is a disturbing depiction of how a lie can quickly become truth - a modern tale of a witch-hunt, injustice, guilt and, ultimately, forgiveness. A fable on how fragile a community can become when gossip, doubt and malice are allowed to flourish. It is a stirring portrait of a man struggling to exonerate himself, and a father and a son reaching out for one another as their world crumbles.