maggs's - Rented List

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"For Sama" is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war.

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab's life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice - whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter's life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

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Kim Ki Taek's (Song Kang Ho) family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son, Ki Woo, gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes.

One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle, but as their deception unravels events begin to get increasingly out of hand in ways you simply cannot imagine.

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As the glinting steel and mirror-glass skyscrapers of London's financial district edge ever closer, the area surrounding Hoxton Street has been transformed by 'luxury redevelopments' and sky-high property prices.

This East London street, less than a mile from the City of London, has become the last bastion of the area's traditional communities. Following its residents over a four-year period, capturing the impact of gentrification, years of austerity and the eruption of Brexit, Zed Nelson's feature-length debut is a tragicomic portrait of not just a street but a nation on the cusp of change.

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Val is the kind of live-in housekeeper who takes her work seriously. She serves her wealthy Sao Paolo employers day in and day out while lovingly nannying their teenage son whom she's raised since toddlerhood.

Everyone and everything in the elegant house has its place until one day, Val's ambitious, clever daughter Jessica arrives from Val's hometown. Jessica's confident, youthful presence upsets the unspoken yet strict balance of power in the household; Val must decide where her allegiances lie and what she's willing to sacrifice.

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The Dude, Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is unemployed and laid-back... until...victim of mistaken identity, two thugs break into his apartment in the errant belief that they are accosting Jeff Lebowski the Pasadena millionaire.

In hope of getting a replacement for his soiled carpet Dude visits his wealthy namesake and, with buddy, ex 'Nam' veteran, Walter (John Goodman) he is swept into a comedy/thriller of extortion, embezzlement, sex and dope. It takes guys as simple as the Dude and Walter to make a story this complicated...and they'd really rather be bowling.

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"Jojo Rabbit" follows a lonely German boy Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic.

Aided by his wildly idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.

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Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream.

Structured as a visual letter to his 4-year-old daughter, Damon blends traditional documentary with dramatised sequences and high-end visual effects to create a vision board of how these solutions could regenerate the world for future generations.

Terrorists are plotting to obtain nuclear materials, putting the lives of hostages and citizens in jeopardy. Only one Elite Force team has the skills, knowledge and firepower to execute Operation Red Sea - a deadly and potentially suicidal mission to rescue the hostages and end the terrorist threat. Inspired by real events.

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Career con man Roy (Ian McKellen) sets his sights on his latest mark, recently widowed Betty (Helen Mirren), who's worth millions. And he means to take it all.

But as the two grow closer, what should have been another simple swindle becomes a high-stakes game of cat and mouse in this suspenseful drama about the secrets people keep and the lies they live.

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Wang Xiaoshuai's deeply moving and intimate drama traces the lives of two interconnected families over three decades of social and political upheaval in China.

The film charts the fortunes of factory workers Liyun (Yong Mei) and Yaojun (Wang Jingchun), a couple reeling from a devastating family tragedy during the tumultuous years between the 1980's and the 21st century. Constricted by the one-child national policy, their lives are gradually transformed under the impact of the country's changing identity, building to a heartbreaking revelation that exposes how political reality affects the fates of the family and the people around them. A cleverly poetic depiction of communist China, 'So Long, My Son' is a sprawling yet personal portrait of human resilience, featuring incredibly tender and award-winning performances from Mei and Jingchun.

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Ricky (Kris Hitchen) and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self employed delivery driver.

It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.

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With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuaron recreated the early-1970's Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, in a revelatory screen debut), the indigenous domestic worker who

keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals. Written, directed, shot, and coedited by Cuaron, 'Roma' is a labor of love with few parallels in the history of cinema, deploying monumental black-and-white cinematography, an immersive soundtrack, and a mixture of professional and nonprofessional performances to shape its author's memories into a world of enveloping texture, and to pay tribute to the woman who nurtured him.

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Francois Ozon's gripping true-life drama tells the story of three men who come together to dismantle the code of silence around historic abuse cases within the Catholic Church. Alexandre (Melville Poupaud) lives in Lyon with his wife and children.

One day he learns by chance that the priest who abused him when he was in scouts is still working with children. He decides to take action and is soon joined by two other victims of the priest. Francois (Denis Menochet) and Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud). They band together to "lift the burden of silence" surrounding their ordeal. But the repercussions and consequences will leave no one unscathed. Based on events from the 2019 conviction of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon for concealing the conduct of Father Bernard Preynat, 'By the Grace of God ' is an urgent portrait of resistance.

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Recounted in flashback to a group of railway travellers, the story wryly details the romantic perils of Mathieu, a wealthy, middle-aged French sophisticate who falls desperately in love with his 19-year-old former chambermaid Conchita.

Thus begins a surreal game of sexual cat-and-mouse, with Mathieu obsessively attempting to win the girl's affections as she manipulates his carnal desires, each vying to gain absolute control of the other.

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The film paints the relationship between L.S. Lowry (Timothy Spall), one of Britain's most iconic artists, and his mother Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave), with whom he lived until her death. We see Lowry in the beginnings of his career, as he yearns for his work to be appreciated in London.

However, his disdainful mother actively tries to dissuade her bachelor son from pursuing his artistic ambitions. At the same time, the film explores how Elizabeth is the very reason Lowry paints anything at all, as he desperately seeks to create something, anything, which will make her happy. This powerful yet humorous story imagines the impact this obsessive mother and son relationship had on the great artist.