Monday Night Foreign Film Series
VIRTUAL CINEMA
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NEW TITLES have been added to STREAM directly to your home. You can watch each film multiple times over a 3 to 5 days for $12/ $9.99 per film.
Thanks and stay safe.
George J. Sandoval, Executive Director
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NOW STREAMING
Diana Kennedy
Nothing Fancy
2020 USA 1hr 21min
Documentary NR
In Spanish and English with English Subtitles
Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy is an intimate, candid perspective into the curious world of 95-year-old cookbook author and British ex-patriot Diana Kennedy, widely regarded as the world’s academic expert on Mexican cuisine. Standing barely five feet tall with a thick English accent, Diana is a formidable critic of anyone who doesn’t agree with her views on Mexican culinary traditions, or, God forbid, doesn’t recycle. The author of nine acclaimed cookbooks, Diana has spent nearly seventy years exploring Mexico (typically solo in her truck), and researching the country’s varied and complex cuisines. A two-time James Beard Award winner, Diana was decorated with an Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government in 1982 and became a Member of the Order of the British Empire from the UK in 2002. Despite her notable achievements, Diana is difficult to categorize; often referred to as the “Julia Child of Mexico”. Given her ediger style, however, Diana prefers a different title: “The Mick Jagger of Mexican Cuisine”.
charming homage to a culinary trailblazer and a true inspiration.
Reviews
“What remains is a lively and uncritical portrait of a woman as passionate about composting as chilaquiles, one who will pitch a fit if you put garlic in your guacamole.” – Jeannette Catsoulis,The New York Times
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NOW STREAMING
Beanpole
2020 Russia 2hr 19min
Drama NR
In Russian with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Russia
In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world. As the film begins, Iya, long and slender and towering over everyone—hence the film’s title—works as a nurse in a shell-shocked hospital, presiding over traumatized soldiers. A shocking accident brings them closer and also seals their fates. The 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war.
Reviews
“Critic’s Pick. Dazzling… a brilliantly told, deeply moving story about love… from the sensationally talented Russian director Kantemir Balagov.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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NOW STREAMING
Bacurau
2019 Brazil 2hr 11min
Drama/Sci-Fi/Action NR
In Portugese and English with English Subtitles
A few years from now… Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau.
“Critic’s Pick! Exhilarating. A heart-thumping political allegory that tips its hat to masters like John Carpenter.” – Manohla Dargis, The NYTimes
“A genre-busting entertainment that is at once a portrait of a community, a horror thriller and a timely piece of political filmmaking. Bacurau is one of those movies like Parasite… where you’re never quite sure which way it’s heading.” – John Powers, NPR
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NOW STREAMING
Mephisto
1981 Hungary 2hr 26min
Drama NR
In German and Hungarian with English Subtitles
The 1981 Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign Language Film)
Mephisto concerns a passionate, but struggling actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who remains in Germany during the Nazi regime and reaps the rewards of this Faustian pact by finally achieving the stardom he has long craved.
“This film is a work of art. The film transmits its messages so forcefully that no one can remain unaffected.” – Ingmar Bergman
“One of the greatest movie performances I’ve ever seen. A performance of electrifying power.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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NOW STREAMING
Corpus Christi
(Boze Cialo)
2019 Poland 1hr 54min
Drama NR
In Polish with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Poland
After spending years in a Warsaw prison for a violent crime, 20-year-old Daniel is released and sent to a remote village to work as a manual laborer. The job is designed to keep the ex-con busy, but Daniel has a higher calling. Over the course of his incarceration he has found Christ, and aspires to join the clergy – but his criminal record means no seminary will accept him. When Daniel arrives in town, one quick lie allows him to be mistaken for the town’s new priest, and he sets about leading his newfound flock. Though he has no training, his passion and charisma inspire the community. At the same time, his unconventional sermons and unpriestly behavior raise suspicions among some of the townsfolk – even more so as he edges towards a dark secret that the community hasn’t revealed in the confessional booth.
Film Sponsor: Keith Powell and Michela Feli
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“Directed by Jan Komasa in only his third feature and starring a complexly compelling Bartosz Bielenia, this is a blistering drama, intense, disturbing and inescapably thought-provoking, a film that gets its power from a merging of potent opposites.”
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NOW STREAMING
Vitalina Varela
2020 Portugal 2hr 4min
Drama NR
In Portuguese/Cape Verdean Creole with English Subtitles
A film of deeply concentrated beauty, acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in an extraordinary performance based on her own life. Vitalina plays a Cape Verdean woman who has travelled to Lisbon to reunite with her husband, after two decades of separation, only to arrive mere days after his funeral. Alone in a strange forbidding land, she perseveres and begins to establish a new life. Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival, as well as an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, Vitalina Varela is a film of shadow and whisper, a profoundly moving and visually ravishing masterpiece.
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Critic Review for Vitalina Varela
“IT’S ESSENTIAL CINEMA. Socially conscious, but dreamlike, elegiac. Stunning pictorialism. In the opening shots of this film, one thinks of Goya and Velasquez; the clouds in the night sky evoke El Greco. Critic’s Pick.”— Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
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NOW STREAMING
Incitement
2020 Israel 2hr 3min
Drama/Thriller NR
In Hebrew with English Subtitles
2020 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film – Official Selection of Israel –
Ophir Award Winner for Best Picture (Israel’s Academy Award)
In September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces the Oslo Accords, which aim to achieve a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians after decades of violence. Yigal Amir, a law student and a devoted Orthodox Jew, cannot believe that his country’s leader will cede territory that he and many others believe is rightfully – by the word of God – theirs. As the prospect of a peaceful compromise approaches, Amir turns from a hot-headed political activist to a dangerous extremist. Consumed by anger and delusions of grandeur, he recruits fighters and steals weapons to form an underground militia intent on killing Palestinians. After his longtime girlfriend leaves him, Amir becomes even more isolated, disillusioned, and bitter. He soon learns of an ancient Jewish law, the Law of the Pursuer, that he believes gives him the right to murder Yitzhak Rabin. Convinced he must stop the signing of the peace treaty in order to fulfill his destiny and bring salvation to his people, Amir’s warped mind sees only one way forward.
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“A chilling portrait of how fanaticism can grow and be enabled, this is a matter-of-fact film that moves with an awful inexorability toward its foregone conclusion.” – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
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NOW STREAMING
The Whistlers
2020 Romania 1hr 37min
Drama/Thriller/Comedy NR (brief nudity)
In Romanian with English Subtitles
The Whistlers, not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off.
Film Sponsor: Ilona and Toby Scott
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“It’s a lot of fun – and often quite funny – while it lasts, though I could have used less gunplay and more whistling, an element that, more than anything else here, speaks to Porumboiu’s gift for deadpan absurdity.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
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NOW STREAMING
Once Were Brothers
Robbie Robertson and the Band
2020 USA 1hr 42min
Documentary R (for some language and drug references)
In English
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is a confessional, cautionary, and occasionally humorous tale of Robertson’s young life and the creation of one of the most enduring groups in the history of popular music, The Band. The film is a moving story of Robertson’s personal journey, overcoming adversity and finding camaraderie alongside the four other men who would become his brothers in music, together making their mark on music history. Once Were Brothers blends rare archival footage, photography, iconic songs and interviews with Robertson’s friends and collaborators including Martin Scorsese, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, and more.
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Critic Review for Once Were Brothers:
Even at its most painful, the Band’s story captures something golden, incendiary and wistfully beautiful – “so beautiful,” Robertson reflects, “that it went up in flames.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
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George J. Sandoval, Executive Director
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The Oxnard Film Society is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. (#20-5734347)
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