In 1970s Yerevan, Armen, a compassionate archivist at the National Archives, spends his days helping ordinary citizens uncover forgotten truths about their past. Haunted by the human consequences of the records he handles, he becomes increasingly troubled by the way history can preserve injustice as easily as it preserves memory. As Armen struggles to reconcile his desire for truth with his concern for the people affected by it, his personal life and growing relationship with a young woman named Anahit intertwine with a profound meditation on memory, identity, and the weight of history.
Category: Arthouse
André Delvaux’s final feature film, based on the novel L’oeuvre au noir (Het hermetisch zwart/The Abyss) by Belgian-born novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, tells the story of Zeno, a doctor and alchemist whose quest for knowledge takes him around 16th-century Europe. The film focuses on the end of Zeno’s travels, when he has returned to Bruges to contemplate his life. Living quietly under an assumed name, he treats the sick in one of the town’s religious houses. But once his identity becomes known, the church authorities put him on trial.
Abel has never left home (literally). After failing with doctors and psychiatrists, Abel’s father Victor brings home Christine, a friend, in an attempt to teach Abel basic social skills. But Victor’s wife Duif accuses him of having an affair, and in the ensuing row Abel is thrown out into the street. But help is at hand when he runs into kind-hearted stripper Zus – whose show Victor is obsessed with…
After wandering into a cemetery, a young man named Shusei is led by the mysterious Madame Enjoji to a secluded mansion. There, he is introduced to Aido, an ethereal woman who seems to be the living embodiment of his most surreal erotic fantasies. Caught between the real world and a haunting dreamscape, Shusei becomes obsessed with Aido.
Set in a shadowy realm of “Dark Romanticism,” on an island in a mysterious lake. The inhabitants are a beautiful vampire, a hunchbacked prince, a black magician, the Erl Queen and other creatures, as well as their victims. It is the story of the eerie rituals that take place in the eternal twilight.
Mathieu Grégoire is an esteemed author who lives in Spa with his wife and daughter and leads a carefully structured life. One day, while out in the desolate landscape of the High Fens he meets a mysterious woman whom he calls ‘Belle’. An obsessive passion is kindled in Mathieu and in a short space of time he loses all control over his existence.
Jean’s solitary existence strangling women along the path of the Tour de France is upended when the troubled Claire finds herself hopelessly drawn to him. Grandrieux operates the camera himself shooting in low-light environments, offering an alien vision of the French countryside stuck in a state of perpetual dusk. SOMBRE announced Grandrieux as a singular voice in the New French Extremity movement, with its fearless gaze into the intersection of desire and death.
Betrayal is set in Bergen in the year 1948. The film’s protagonist is the seven-year-old Kamilla, who grows up in a society under reconstruction, and in a family in disintegration. Her parents are mostly concerned about money and about themselves, but in her friend Svein Kamilla finds the love and solidarity that she is missing.