GAN (Ruthie Shatz, Adi Barash, 2003)

From Israel and Canada, Garden is a deeply affecting film because of the loving friendship of the two homeless boys, gay male prostitutes in Tel Aviv, that the film documents, the harshness of their circumstance and the courage with which they daily face this, and the extraordinary degree of trust that filmmakers Ruthie Shatz and […]

BLISSFULLY YOURS (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2001)

From Thailand, the lovely, brimming Sud sanaeha takes us into the mountains, forest and water at the Thai-Burmese border; but it opens abruptly in Khon Kaen, in a forest-green draped clinic that in fact had been where writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents, both medical doctors, practiced. Min, a patient, was there once before; the rash for […]

UP AND DOWN (Jan Hrebějk, 2004)

Eventually both story-lines of Horem pádem, from the Czech Republic, intersect. One is fine; the other, terrible.      The film begins with two truck drivers unloading their delivery of illegal Indian immigrants in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. They discover that a baby has been (accidentally) left behind. “Got any formula?” one […]