The early 1960s: In preparation for his Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish boy, Max Glick (Noam Zylberman) from a small Manitoba community with an overbearing family tries to navigate his coming-of-age with his family’s condescension and bigotry using his sarcastic, Jewish humour. The town’s rabbi dies, and a sub-plot develops in which Max’s father (Aaron Schwartz) and grandfather (Jan Rubes)-both synagogue leaders-are saddled with a traditional Hassidic rabbi who sticks out like a sore thumb among the otherwise assimilated Jewish community. To make matters more difficult, Max likes a Catholic girl (14 year old Fairuza Baulk in just her third film), whom he later competes with in a piano competition. The quirky, fun-loving rabbi tries to help him with his problems, yet harbours a secret ambition of his own.
Filmed in Winnipeg and rural Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada.
Category: Drama
Drama
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Goryokaku
After the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, there was a series of battles fought while the former supporters of the Tokugawa shogunate retreated to the north where they actually started a sovereign nation that was recognized by more than one European country. Survivors of the Shinsengumi were among the followers of Enomoto Takeaki who took them to the northernmost island of Ezo where they fought their final battle at the star shaped fort, Goryokaku. The Japanese Civil Wars fought in the name of the emperor signaled the complete end of the feudal system and Japan’s entry into the modern world as those brave samurai tried to halt progress and learned that the age of modern warfare and weaponry had passed them by. Swords were no match for rifles and cannons, nor was any man a match for the power of the imperial flag. Japanese loyalty to the emperor has long defined the nation and culture despite the changing times.
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Kikuchi Eri: Kyonyū seme
A pseudo-documentary that follows a director and an actress.
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A Friendship in Vienna
Inge Dournenvald and Lise Mueller are best friends in pre-WW2 Austria, despite the fact that Inge is Jewish and Lise is the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer. When they are forbidden to see each other, they meet secretly. After the Germans invade Austria in 1938, Inge and her family escape to America with the help of Lise
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Camille Claudel
The life of Camille Claudel, a French sculptor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.
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Sandakot Na Bala
After the murder of his father, Emil tries to work under his uncle Daniel. Soon, he discovers that his uncle may have had a hand in his father’s death.
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A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
A recent high school graduate is faced with two options, either go to a business school where his father wants him to go to, or get a full time job. However he decides to defy his father and go to Hawaii. Trouble is he has no money. Along the way he comes to understand his parents and eventually bonds with his father.
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The Everlasting Secret Family
A beautiful, if ambitious and amoral, youth is tapped to become the lover of a powerful senator. The young man quickly realizes that he can hold this place, with all its perks, only as long as he is young. He has no other function than being young. With the help of an aged judge, the young man, referred to only as The Lover, contrives a plan to make a change in the way of the world, a plan that will take him years to realize. To succeed, he must manipulate, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the senator, his wife, the family chauffeur (who was, when young, a lover), and, by implication, the entire well-planned and controlling everlasting secret family.
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Byon Gang-soi (Garujigi)
Gang-soi is a mean scoundrel who travels up north. Ong-nyo, a woman destined to be widowed, is run out of her village and travels south. Gang-soi and Ong-nyo meet in Chongseok-gwan, a midpoint between Hwang-hae province and Gaeseong, and they get together. As they wander the lands, Ong-nyo works hard while Gang-soi does nothing. They settle down in Mt. Jiri. But when Gang-soi brings back a totem pole while looking for wood and when he tries to start a fire with it, he incurs its wrath and dies. Thus their relationship comes to a tragic end.