mwdw's - Rented List

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.

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Following the closure of a gypsum mine in the Nevada town she calls home, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road in this "exquisite film" (Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal).

Exploring an unconventional life as a modern-day nomad, Fern discovers a resilience and resourcefulness unlike any she's known before long the way, she meets other nomads who become mentors in the vast landscape of the American West.

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In the final days of World War 2, a young Hungarian is making his way home, through countryside full of the debris of war, when he is captured and imprisoned by Russians. Left in the custody of a young Russian soldier, the two youths form a friendship in spite of not speaking each other's language.

The Hungarian's attempts to continue his journey homeward provide the framework for this powerful film, considered Miklos Jancso's first masterpiece. Jancso's consistent vision - the psychological presence of landscape, the randomness of violence, the arbitrary nature of power - is first evident in this poetic, evocative and deeply personal work from one of cinema's most acclaimed filmmakers.

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Janos (Péter Andorai) and Katalin (Ildikó Bánsági) are strangers but forced to pose as husband and wife to hide their links to the anti-Nazi resistance in Budapest 1944.

The intensity and intimacy of this relationship forces them to passionately confront their past, challenging what they believe and in whom they can place their trust.

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The first in-depth documentary about a long time underestimated composer by Reiner E. Moritz Underestimated by his contemporaries, but today acclaimed as one of the greatest and imaginative composers of his time. Anton Bruckner was a genius of tones.

Such great conductors like Kent Nagano, Valery Gergiev and Simon Rattle let the composer come alive in the documentary „Anton Bruckner: The Making of a Giant" telling the ups and downs of life through his music. Using the opportunity of drawing on Gergiev's recording of the Bruckner Cycle with the Munich Philharmonic, contributions from the Florianer Sängerknaben, organists at St. Florian Linz and the Vienna Court Chapel as well as the conductor of the Linzer Singakademie, we gain insights into the work of the composer. We visit his birthplace, hear about his teaching assignments, his triumphs as organist in France and England, his relationship with Wagner and the difficult times in Vienna, where he spent the latter part of his life.

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Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist and once promising novelist, lives his easy life among Rome's decadent high society in a swirl of rooftop parties and late-night soirees.

But when he learns of the death of his friend's wife - a woman he once loved as an 18-year-old - his life is thrown into perspective and he begins to see the world through new eyes...

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One of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, 'Tabu' is a diptych starting off in present day Lisbon where Teresa Madruga gives a luminous performance as Pilar, a woman concerned about her neighbour Aurora's eccentricities. Finally Pilar meets Gian Luca, a figure from Aurora's past.

He starts his story and the film jumps back in time to colonial Africa, where he and Aurora had a passionate love-affair. This second part is made as a quasi-silent film, with no dialogue, just music and voice-over. Former film critic Miguel Gomes both uses and slyly comments on all the techniques of cinema to make a truly virtuoso film. With a soundtrack that ranges from Lisztian piano music to cover versions of Phil Spector. 'Tabu' is just a delight. Not to mention the sad and melancholy crocodile...

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CoIm Bairead's beautifully understated feature debut finds a young girl coming to terms with loss and the importance of family in rural Ireland. Cait (Catherine Clinch), a quiet, neglected young girl, is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with relatives for the summer.

At first intimidated by her new environment, she quickly blossoms in the care of Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) and her farmer husband, Sean (Andrew Bennett). As this new home becomes an idyll for her, Cait senses that something is plaguing her new foster parents - an unspoken pain that Eibhlin and Sean never discuss, which Cait's youthful curiosity begins to uncover.

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During the economic boom of the 1960s, Europe's highest building is being built in Italy's prosperous North. At the other end of the country, young cavers explore Europe's deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland.

The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 metres below Earth, is reached for the first time. The intruders' venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a small neighbouring village, but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino plateau whose solitary life begins to interweave with the group's journey. 'il Buco' chronicles a visit to the depths of life and nature and parallels two great voyages to the interior.