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Tribeca Festival · 2008

Tribeca Festival 2008

Showcase

The festival organisers say: "This mix of ten acclaimed festival favorites and award winners presents a taste of some of the top films in current world cinema. From an Oscar-nominee for Best Foreign Film about an investigation into the massacre of a group of Polish officers during the Second World War to two experimental films gaining notoriety, this international selection portrays both gripping personal tales as well as exceptional national histories."

Programme

10 films · 4 reviews

Jump to a film

Algeria, Unspoken Stories

Unearthing buried memories of Algeria's war of independence, this bold revision of official history feels like the embrace of a lost kin or a return home. Its challenge to nationalism built on ethnicity and religion has resulted in its continued failure to receive the license that would allow Algerians to see it.

(Country: France; Year: 2007; Director: Jean-Pierre Lledo; Writer: Jean-Pierre Lledo)

Couscous (La Graine Et Le Mulet, The Secret Of The Grain)

Review preview for Couscous

Aside from a slight flabbiness in some areas, Kechiche is to be praised for exploring the nature of change on a personal and a community level - and packing the result with some emotional wallop.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
The head of a Tunisian immigrant clan tries to realise his dream of opening a couscous restaurant.

(Country: France; Year: 2007; Director: Abdel Kechiche; Writer: Abdel Kechiche; Stars: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche, Bouraouïa Marzouk, Alice Houri, Leila D'Issernio, Abelkader Djeloulli, Olivier Loustau, Sabrina Ouazani, Mohamed Benabdeslem)

Full review See: Tribeca 2008: Day 8 and 9

Football Under Cover

When the members of a Berlin women's football team (we call it "soccer") learn to their surprise they have counterparts in Iran, but that those women have never been allowed to play an actual game, they set out for Tehran to make the impossible happen.

(Country: Germany, Iran; Year: 2008; Director: David Assmann, Ayat Najafi; Writer: Corinna Assmann, David Assmann, Marlene Assmann, Valerie Assmann, Ayat Najafi; Stars: Niloofar Basir, Narmila Fathi, Sanna El-Agha, Marlene Assmann, Ayat Najafi, Hüseyin Karaduman, Paraskewi Boras, Mehtap Ardahanli, Corinna Assmann, Valerie Assmann, Stawrula Boras)

Hidden In Plain Sight

Spanning several continents, frequent Tribeca Film Festival guest Mark Street examines his own position within diverse urban landscapes in his quest for traces of modern revolutionaries—from Salvador Allende's in Santiago to Ho Chi Minh's in Hanoi, Dakar, and Marseille.

(Country: USA; Year: 2008; Director: Mark Street) , Official site

See: Tribeca Film Festival: Day 10

Katyn

Review preview for Katyn

While the film isn’t a complete success it’s still a powerful, heartfelt take on the cruelties of which people can be capable – and the courage and nobility they can display in their determination to find out the truth.

Jeff Robson · 4 out of 5
In the early days of World War Two, thousands of captured Polish officers are handed over to the Soviet authorities – and vanish.

(Country: Poland; Year: 2007; Director: Andrzej Wajda; Writer: Andrzej Mularczyk, Przemyslaw Nowakowski, Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Andrzej Wajda; Stars: Artur Zmijewski, Maja Ostaszewska, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert, Magdalena Cielecka, Agnieszka Glinska, Pawel Malaszynski, Maja Komorowska, Wladyslaw Kowalski, Oleg Drach) , Official site

Full review

Lioness (Team Lioness)

Review preview for Lioness

It is the unspoken experience, the agony that is Iraq, which hangs so heavy in the vacuum between what you see and what you imagine.

Angus Wolfe Murray · 3 out of 5
Women soldiers in Iraq.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Meg McLagan, Daria Sommers) , Official site

Full review

Playing (Jogo de Cena)

One of Brazil's most respected documentary filmmakers invited two dozen women to be filmed as they told their life stories. Months later, he filmed a group of actresses as they reenacted the same stories. The result couldn't be simpler - or more inexplicably magical!

(Country: Brazil; Year: 2007; Director: Eduardo Coutinho; Stars: Marília Pêra, Andréa Beltrão, Fernanda Torres, Aleta Gomes Vieira, Claudiléa Cerqueira de Lemos, Débora Almeida, Gisele Alves Moura, Jeckie Brown, Lana Guelero, Maria de Fátima Barbosa, Marina D'Elia)

See: Tribeca 2008 Diary: Day 1 and 2

Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind

Award-winning independent filmmaker John Gianvito traverses the United States, ferreting out the gravesites and monuments of American rebels and leftists embedded in long-forgotten landscapes. In singular fashion, he revives America's rich history of progressive social protest.

(Country: USA; Year: 2007; Director: John Gianvito; Writer: Howard Zinn)

Secrecy

In the years following September 11, the black redaction stripe has become a familiar sight to most Americans. Secrecy probes the roots of the United States' culture of classification—and its consequences. Amid the American hunger for instantaneous news and up-to-date "facts", this unflinching film uncovers the vast, invisible world of government secrecy.

(Year: 2007; Director: Peter Galison, Robb Moss) , Official site

Strangers (Zarim)

Review preview for Strangers

Energetic, immediate and defiantly hopeful.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Romance blossoms between an Israeli and a Palestinian - but will wider conflicts halt it in its tracks?

(Country: Israel; Year: 2007; Director: Erez Tadmor, Guy Nattiv; Writer: Erez Tadmor, Guy Nattiv; Stars: Liron Levo, Lubna Azabal, Abdaliah El Akal, Birol Ünel, Partick Albenque, Dominique Loilia) , Official site

Full review See: Tribeca 2008 Diary: Day 3 and 4