International Education Week Films: European Cinema

When the circus leaves town, Zygmunt and Marysia unwittingly adopt a camel into their home. The couple quickly forms a close bond with the nameless camel, but as the bond grows stronger, their neighbors slowly begin to ostracize them. Scripted by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, directed by star Jerzy Stuhr and shot in shimmering black-and-white by Oscar®-winning cinematographer Pawel Edelman, THE BIG ANIMAL is a passionate film that exposes greed while celebrating family and tolerance.

Set during the Thirty Years’ War, in the first half of the 17th century: Anna Fierling, also called Mother Courage, is a merchant with a wagonload of food and goods. She stays out of politics, following the armies as they move back and forth across Central Europe, and does not bemoan war’s injustices. She is passionately committed to her three children and tries to protect them. But one after the other, she loses them to the war from which she profits. This does not change her mind about war, however, and Mother Courage diligently continues to ply her trade. This film is strictly modelled upon the 1949 Berliner Ensemble (BE) production of Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht and Erich Engel. A film adaptation had been in discussion since the late 1940s; but neither Erich Engel nor director Wolfgang Staudte, who had already shot parts of an earlier version of the film in 1955, were able to please Brecht. Finally, Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth, two BE directors, took on the project and produced a film in the tradition of Brecht’s epic theater with actors of the BE ensemble.

The dynamics between friends are challenged when Martin arrives at the Christmas party wearing a dress. The evening becomes an exploration of male roles, and where hidden desires comes forth. Selected at LGBT Toronto Film Festival.

In the award-winning HANNAH ARENDT, the sublime Barbara Sukowa reteams with director Margarethe von Trotta for a brilliant new biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt’s reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker—controversial both for her portrayal of Eichmann and the Jewish councils—introduced her now-famous concept of the “Banality of Evil.”

Using footage from the actual Eichmann trial and weaving a narrative that spans three countries, von Trotta beautifully turns the often invisible passion for thought into immersive, dramatic cinema.

Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Jewish Film Festival. Winner of Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Barbara Sukowa) and second place for Outstanding Feature Film at the German Film Awards.

INDIVISIBLE is an award-winning Italian drama about the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood. Dasy and Viola (Angela and Marianna Fontana) are conjoined twin sisters living in the suburbs of Naples. They are blessed with beautiful voices and, thanks to their performances at local weddings, communions and baptisms, have become the breadwinners for their entire family. Kept isolated from the world by their exploitative father, their lives are turned upside down when one of them falls in love for the first time…and they discover that it is possible for them to be separated.

In a small Bulgarian town, Nade is an honest, hard-working elementary school teacher and devoted mother, struggling to keep her life together. Her unemployed, alcoholic husband has secretly spent their mortgage payments on booze, the agency where she translates legal documents for extra cash is going under, and a thief in her class has stolen the last of her money out of her purse. With few options left, Nade turns to a local loan shark for help, but with the reposession of her home looming, she finds herself with little hope. Resorting to measures her former self would have found depraved, Nade attempts one last desperate act to get the money she needs.