BEYOND BORDERS
November 5th – 28th
This month’s theme of beyond borders is dedicated to films that cross borders, languages, cultures and national histories. The films explore alienation from roots, hybrid identities, transnational journeys and postcolonial struggle.
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La Haine explores a day in the life of three ethnically mixed boys in the banlieues of Paris, as they await the news regarding their friend who has been beaten by the police. Similarly, Black Girl re-stages colonial dynamics in postcolonial Senegal and France. The double bill of Fatih Akin’s Head-On and The Edge of Heaven weaves together the stories of Turkish-German immigrants. Head-On is a doomed love story between two German-Turks Cahit and Sibel, who end up in a marriage of convenience and a path towards destruction. The Edge of Heaven follows three families and their intertwined fates.
(1995)
LA HAINE
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dir. Mathieu Kassovitz
France/98min/Subtitled
with Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui
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Synopsis:
A trio of Parisian, Jewish and African teenage drifters in a dead-end banlieu outside Paris, portray the everyday afflictions that the immigrant population deal with. Their awareness of their own marginalisation reaches a climactic boiling point.
(2018)
birds of passage
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dir. Ciro Guerra, Cristina Gallego
Colombia, Denmark/125min/Subtitled
with Carmiña Marinez, Natalia Reyes, José Acosta
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Synopsis:
Unfolding in the Guajira desert in the 1970s, the film follows a Wayuu indigenous family who takes a leading role in the origins of the Colombian marijuana drug trade, discovering the perks of wealth and power, but with a violent and tragic downside.
(1966)
BLACK GIRL
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dir. Ousmane Sembène
Sénegal, France/65min/Subtitled
with Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek, Robert Fontaine
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Synopsis:
A Senegalese woman is eager to find a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a maid after the family moves to the south of France. In her new country, she is constantly made aware of her race and mistreated by her employers.
(1999)
BEAU TRAVAIL
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dir. Claire Denis
France/89min/Subtitled
with Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin
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Synopsis:
Loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, and set against Djibouti’s sun-drenched desert and coast, Beau travail focuses on a French Foreign Legion outpost, run under the strict discipline of sergeant Galoup. The arrival of new recruit Sentain awakens a burning jealousy within Galoup.
(2004)
HEAD-ON
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dir. Fatih Akin
Germany, Turkey/117min/Subtitled
with Birol Unel, Sibel Kekilli, Catrin Striebeck
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Synopsis:
The tale of two lost souls, in which twenty year-old Sibel, desperate to escape the suffocating traditional discipline of her family, convinces disillusioned alcoholic Cahit to marry her. When Cahit is sent to jail and Sibel flees to Turkey, her heart and soul remain with him.
(2007)
EDGE OF HEAVEN
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dir. Fatih Akin
Germany, Turkey/116min/Subtitled
with Yurgul Yesilcaj, Baki Davrak, Tuncel Kurtiz
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Synopsis:
This critically acclaimed film about love, loss, and redemption interweaves the stories of six people from Germany and Turkey, whose paths fatefully cross between the two countries.