seen's - Rented List

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Their loving relationship forged in childhood and adolescence,the celebrated playwright Lillian Hellman and her close friend Julia find their adult lives overshadowed by the growing menace of Nazism.

The bonds of friendship are tested when freedom-fighter Julia risks her life to aid the anti-Nazi cause and enlists Lillian's help in a daring and dangerous mission whose aftermath forces Lillian to confront an emotionally complex mystery regarding her friend's fate.

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The debut feature of master filmmaker Frantisek Vlacil (Marketa Lazarova), The White Dove's straightforward narrative belies complex themes and striking visual imagery. A young boy injures and then nurses a white dove back to health.

Echoing Ken Loach's film Kes and with music by the great Zdenek Liska, the film emerges as a work of great poetry and humanism. The surrealist Josef Kilian is a darkly-humorous allegory of life under a totalitarian regime. Inspired by two icons of Czech literature, the anti-authoritarian Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk) and the renowned Franz Kafka, the film was suppressed by Czech authorities after the Soviet invasion of 1968.

After a date and seemingly innocent sexual encounter, 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) is left with an inescapable sense that someone, or something is following her. Jay and her friends team up to try and find ways to escape the traumatising horrors that are always right behind them.

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Hong Kong, 1962. Chow (Tony Leung) is a junior newspaper editor with an elusive wife. His new neighbour Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary whose husband seems to spend all his time on business trips. They become friends, making the lonely evenings more bearable.

As their relationship develops they make a discovery that changes their lives forever...

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Klaus Barbie, also known as the 'butcher of Lyon' was implicated in 4,000 deaths and the deportation of 7,000 Jews from occupied France, before he inexplicably vanished.

This Oscar winning documentary, from visionary director Marcel Ophuls, traces the 40-year hunt for Barbie, initiated by the same governments that would later hide him and protect his family.
Employed by the American government as an informant, Barbie was smuggled out of Europe via an underground railway with Vatican ties — known as 'the rat line'. He found refuge in South America where his particular talents' were employed by governments in Bolivia and Peru. Until his trial in 1987, authorities harboured Barbie at the same time as denouncing his crimes.
This spellbinding documentary features interviews with both supporters and opponents of Barbie's trial, from his defence attorney to journalists, to old friends and former US Counter Intelligence agents. The film spans 70 years, three continents and 120 hours of interview footage.
Hotel Terminus exposes a complex web of deceit, collaboration and political deviance nearly as unforgettable as the crimes themselves. 'It's a fine, serious work by a film maker unlike any other' - New York Times

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From an executive producer of 'The Shield', comes a gripping drama that takes you into the ruthless underworld of outlaw bikers. The Sons of Anarchy live, ride and die for brotherhood.

But as the club's leader (Ron Perlman) and his wife (Katey Sagal) steer them in an increasingly lawless direction, her son Jax (Charlie Hunnam) is torn between loyalty and the legacy in this adrenaline-charged first season.

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Mexican legend recounted that for every bridge built the devil would ask for one soul, so that the bridge never fell.

This film tells the story of the workers who are constructing a 17-kilometre second deck for Mexico City's inner Periferico freeway, and in doing so, transforming the city, its landscape and the lives of its inhabitants. In the Pit is the story of those whose hands and sweat go into the making of this mammoth work of concrete, steel and asphalt: their hopes and dreams, their stoicism and their dignity; ultimately, their survival. Contrasts, emotions and small moments culminate in the loss of a soul taken by the devil - a soul that will remain as a memory of the workers who built the Second Deck.
Juan Carlos Rulfo's multi-award-winning documentary (including the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize) explores both the construction and the city that it is to serve. While the progress of the second deck is the structural and temporal basis of the film, a series of impressionistic vignettes captures the day-to-day lives of those involved in the construction: the hard worker, the liar, the joker, the player. We see the workers' places of origin - Michoacan, Estado de Mexico; we participate in their lives - funerals, festivities, music, dinner, rest. Above all, In the Pit presents the human face of anonymous labour.

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Set in Singapore during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, 'Ilo Ilo' chronicles the day-to-day drama of the Lim family - troublesome grade-schooler Jiale and his over-stressed parents, Heck and Leng.

Comfortably middle-class and with another baby on the way, they hire Teresa, a Filipino immigrant, as a live-in maid and nanny. An outsider in both the family and Singapore itself, Teresa initially struggles to manage Jiale's antics and to find her footing in her new community. However, the two eventually form a unique bond, but just as Teresa becomes an unspoken part of the family, unforeseen circumstances in an uncertain economy will challenge the new normal yet again. Touching and beautiful, the film takes the viewer on a life affirming journey through strife, love and loss.

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It is 1827. Beethoven is dead and the whole of Vienna is mourning. For his friend Anton Schindler (Jeroen Krabbe) it is the start of a strange search.

In his will Beethoven has left all his worldly goods to his "Immortal Beloved" and Schindler takes it upon himself to discover this person’s identity. His search takes him on a fascinating journey into the mysterious life of the legendary composer and his artistic and romantic passions. A life that is once tragic and inspirational; obsessive and romantic; lived by a man best by his own genius an its tumultuous consequences.

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Marine Vacth (Jeune et Jolie) plays Chloé, a young woman who falls in love with her psychoanalyst Paul (Jérémie Renier). When they decide to move in together, everything seems perfect until a series of discoveries lead her to believe that he may be living a double life.

As she searches for the truth, Chloé's investigations plunge her into a dark and bewildering world of smoke, mirrors and doppelgangers where nothing is as it seems, and no one can be trusted.

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John (Jack Reynor) lives with his mother, Jean (Toni Collette), in a Dublin social housing suburb and ekes out a meager living as a taxi driver.

Spending his days hanging out with his best friend, Shane (Will Poulter) and long nights driving, he returns home one morning to find his mother unconscious from an overdose. It is not the first time. Embarrassed and engulfed by a sense of helplessness, Jean violently rejects John's attempts to help. But when Jean is offered a final opportunity to recover by her counselor Jim (Michael Smiley), and with no savings or insurance, John is forced to offer his services to a criminal gang to help pay for his mother's costly rehabilitation program. John is subsequently faced with a life-changing task that may alter him and his family's lives forever.

When a young poet (Michael Gothard) hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity.

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In "Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision" filmmaker Edgar Reitz continues the journey through German history which began with the celebrated Heimat trilogy, returning to the fictional village of Schabbach to depict the story of the Simon family's ancestors. Jakob, like most young men, has dreams.

However, his are a little bigger than many of his companions' living in a small rural village in 19th century Germany. He wishes to join the hundreds of thousands that are emigrating Europe for the distant and mythical realms of South America. But his brother's return from military service throws Jakob's life into disarray and he must choose between his dreams of escape and his love for a gem cutter's daughter.

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Helen marks the astonishing feature debut of the award-winning writer-director team of Molloy and Lawlor. Helen was premiered in the 2008 Edinburgh Festival where the film’s stylish originality received great praise, being described by one critic as ‘the latest sign of a UK art cinema resurgence’.

An 18 year-old girl called Joy has gone missing. Helen, a lost young woman is a few weeks away from leaving her care home. Helen is chosen to ‘play’ Joy in a police reconstruction. Joy represents all that was missing form Helen’s life.

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Anita Minter is a troubled high school student, bullied by her peers and abused by her guardian. When her class project requires that the students have pen pals, Anita begins corresponding with Howard Hickock - a prisoner at the central California jail.

Their relationship evolves from friendship to passion and when Howard is released from prison the couple decides to marry. Once married, their love quickly gets them into trouble, with their devotion to one another drives them to extreme measures and ends in the death of others. Anita and Howard must flee the town before the law catches up with them and their love ends in tragedy.