mwdw's - Rented List

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Sao Paulo is an urban jungle, and a desperate father has lost his son... Theo (Wagner Moura) is living the good life in an upscale Brazilian neighbourhood; he is a hardworking doctor, husband, and father.

However, Theo has chosen his career over his family and his wife announces that she wants a divorce. Nothing could prepared him for the day he comes home to discover his 15-year-old-son, Pedro, has gone missing. Theo takes to the road in search of his son - a journey that leads him across Brazil, where will discover what truly matters to him. This film whisks us through the Sao Paulo nightscape - from swanky suburbs to shantytown slums. Theo embarks on a journey of discovery, exposing the realities of Brazil's population outside the realms of big cities and picture-perfect beaches.

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After failing to be admitted into the renowned Sao Paulo Symphonic Orchestra, talented violinist Laerte is forced to teach music in a public school in Heliopolis, the biggest and most violent slum of Brazil. There, Laerte experiences the brutal reality himself.

Little by little, he is able to gain the trust of the students and the community while he starts to give classes in a less conventional way, opening the doors to a new world.

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Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's follow-up to 'The Lesson' is a social parable about a humble man who gets unwillingly celebrated. Railway linesman Tsanko (Stefan Denolyubov) finds lots of bank notes on the tracks.

When he reports the money rather than pocketing it, the Ministry of Transport - embroiled in a scandal - takes the opportunity to parade their new hero. But Tsanko might not be a PR person's dream. Yet compared to PR head Julia (Margita Gosheva), he's an angel. When Julia removes his watch - a Russian-made Slava (Glory), inscribed and presented to him by his father - for the ceremony to present him with a new one, it sets off a chain of events that threatens to bring down the Ministry thanks to a combination of corruption, irresponsibility and arrogance.

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Nadezhda (Margita Gosheva) is an English teacher who also works as a translator to earn extra cash. Stunned by a theft by one of her students she is determined to find the culprit. But meanwhile her personal life is put under huge pressure.

A bailiff tells her that her house is about to be seized because of unpaid mortgage payments. Determined to keep the house, she will do everything she can to get the money before it is too late. Her personal and professional life converge as she wonders, whilst her options start to run out, whether to question the principles she teaches her students.

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On a hot summer day, a bicycle is found in a wheat field, and nearby, the body of a young girl. The killer is never found. 23 years later. Same date. Same place. Another bicycle. Another girl.

This time round, an ageing detective convinced that history is repeating itself, comes out of retirement determined to track down the perpetrator with the help of his young colleague. Spanning a week in the investigation, both of them will begin a journey that will see intact worlds shatter apart.

Set in the holy city of Mashhad, Ali Abbasi's haunting latest feature follows journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), as she investigates the murders of several sex workers by the 'Spider Killer', who believes he is on a divine mission to cleanse the city of sinners.

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Recently retired, Harold Fry is well into his 60s and content to fade quietly into the background of life.

Harold's life with his wife Maureen is uneventful and their marriage frozen, due to an unspeakable conflict relating to the absence of their son, until one day, Harold learns his old friend Queenie is dying. He sets off to the post office to send her a letter and decides to keep walking: all the way to her hospice, 450 miles away.

From director-writer-producer Todd Field comes Tar, starring Cate Blanchett as the iconic musician, Lydia Tar. The film examines the changing nature of power, its impact and durability in our modern world.

The courageous story of the Battle of the Atlantic: a story of an ocean, a ship and a handful of men. The brave crew are the heroes. The heroine is the ship. The only villain is the sea that man, and war, have made even more brutal...

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Karoly Makk's Cannes award-winning gem is a meditation on time, memory, love and loss. Two women - an elderly, bedridden mother and a loyal wife - await the return of an imprisoned man.

Beautifully played by two giants of Hungarian cinema, Lili Darvas and Mari Torocsik, the film is a subtle yet powerful exploration of how love sustains life, even in times of fear and uncertainty. Perfectly realised, with luminous cinematography and innovative editing, Makk's tender masterpiece is a landmark of international cinema.

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EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes and a curious spirit, begins his life as a circus performer before escaping on a trek across the Polish and Italian countryside.

During his travels, he encounters an eclectic cast of characters, including a countess, a young Italian priest and a riotous Polish football team. An equine hero, EO boldly points out societal ills and serves as warning of the dangers of neglect and inaction, all while on a quest for freedom.

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London, 1953. Mr. Williams, played by Bill Nighy, is a veteran civil servant, a cog in the city's stifling bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild following WWII. After a shattering health diagnosis, it dawns on him he has not been living his life to the full.

Amidst the fog of his paperwork, and his loneliness at home, he yearns to find fulfilment before it's too late. He is encouraged in his search by two younger colleagues - the vibrant Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood) and idealistic new recruit Peter (Alex Sharp) - and a hedonistic stranger, Sutherland (Tom Burke), encountered during a desperate trip to the seaside.

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Julia (Maika Monroe) joins her husband when he relocates to his family's native Romania for a new job. Having recently abandoned her acting career, she finds herself frequently alone and unoccupied.

One night, peoplewatching from her picture window, she spots a vague figure in an adjacent building, who seems to be looking back at her. Soon after, while alone at a local movie theatre, Julia's sense of being watched intensifies, and she becomes certain she's being followed - could it be the same unknown neighbour? Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Spider stalks the city.

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Set against the backdrop of an iced-over contemporary Helsinki, and based on Leo Tolstoy's False Note, Frozen Land takes you on a journey through a strikingly bleak and occasionally blackly funny landscape where money's the goal and drink abounds, and where loneliness and desperation push people to

the edge of their lives and sanity. Divided into chapters 'Unemployment', 'Booze', 'The Axe', 'Family', 'Snowpile' and 'Police', Frozen Land is a brilliantly devised web of interconnecting Finnish fates Set in motion by the printing of a forged 500 Euro note, the film bounces between the lives of a pair of young computer hackers, a depressed policewoman, a mullet-haired car thief and a vacuum salesman and recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon with a vengeance. At the forefront of a new generation of Finnish filmmakers, Aku Louhimes' gripping visuals form the compelling backdrop for an exceptionally powerful ensemble of performances in a compelling and thrillingly inventive work that suggests a harsh but beautiful world determined by fate.

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Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler) embarks on a journey across Germany in order to find his voice as a writer. Introspective and seemingly without personality, he encounters a series of eccentric characters, including a beautiful and enigmatic actress and a mute girl, who draw Wilhelm into their worlds.

Loosely based on Goethe's landmark novel, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Wim Wenders once again shows his mastery over the road movie genre and creates a brilliant character study of one man's alienation from the world around him.