Certified Copy 2011
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Jean-Claude Carrier

From acclaimed director Abbis Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us) comes the story of a couple's apparent chance meeting in beautiful Tusccany. He (William Shimell) is a British author in town to talk about his new book. She (Juliette Binoche) is a French gallery owner in search of originality. Together they tour the local galleries, cafes and museums and discover that nothing is quite what it seems and truth, like art, is always open to interpretation. A captivating film, Certified Copy marries post-modern reality games with mature romantic comedy in a single playful and provocative package.(Mongrel Films)
A mix of English/French/Italian dialogue with English subtitles

Biutiful 2010
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Starring: Javier Bardem

A heartbreakingly direct performance by Javier Bardem anchors Biutiful, a film from Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams). Uxbal (Bardem) is not an admirable man: he's a criminal middleman, helping human traffickers and illicit street peddlers in Barcelona. But in the thick of his corrupt and compromised world, Uxbal strives to do some modest good: he demands heaters for the cold basement where illegal Chinese laborers sleep and he carefully scrapes together money for his children, whom he deeply adores. On top of all this, Uxbal can commune with the recently dead, and tries to pass on reassurance to the bereaved. When Uxbal himself is diagnosed with severe cancer, he desperately tries to leave behind something better for his children. This plot summary paints a bleak picture, and there's no question this is--much like Iñárritu's other films, including Amores Perros--an emotionally harrowing experience. But Biutiful is also visually rich and deeply humane, and holds moments of grace that can only be found in sadness and loss. The entire cast brings a fullness of life to all of the characters, no matter how briefly they appear, but Bardem almost never leaves the screen and carries the movie with magnetic force. --Bret Fetzer

Spanish dialogue with English/Spanish subtitles

The Father of My Children 2010
Directed by Helene Bastide
Starring: Elsa Pharaon

GREGOIRE A PARISIAN FILM PRODUCER, HAS IT ALL. ON THE SURFACE HE SEEMS INVINCIBLE MAINTAINING HUMOR AND CHARM AS HE TIRELESSLY JUGGLES THE DEMANDS OF HIS PRODUCT COMPANY. BUT WHEN HE REACHES A DRAMATIC BREAKING POINT, HIS FAMILY'S LOVE AND RESILIENCE IS TESTED AND THEIR WORLD IS FOREVER CHANGED.(IFC Independent Film)

Sweden

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2010
Directed by Niels Arden Opley
Starring: Michael Nygvist, Noami Rapace

Fans of Stieg Larsson's Men Who Hate Women may have been concerned about how the Swedish author's novel would translate to the screen, but they needn't have worried. Significant changes to the source material have been made, but director Niels Arden Opley's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as it's now called, is mostly riveting. As the story begins, middle-aged investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has just been convicted of a bogus charge of libel against a rich and corrupt corporate hotshot when he's unexpectedly offered a most unusual gig. An aging captain of industry named Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) wants Blomkvist to figure out what happened to Vanger's niece, who disappeared more than 40 years earlier; not only is the old man convinced that she was murdered, but he suspects that another member of his large and rather disagreeable family (which includes several former Nazis) is the culprit. Blomkvist takes the job, which includes spending at least six months on Vanger's isolated island in the middle of winter. But what he doesn't know is that he's being spied on by twentysomething Lisbeth Salander (brilliantly played by Noomi Rapace in a career-making performance), the titular Girl and the possessor of remarkable skills as a sleuth and computer hacker. With her gothlike piercings and all-black clothes, Lisbeth is a vivid character, to say the least. While we don't exactly know the details of her dark past, it's obviously still with her; indeed, she's just been assigned a new "guardian" (like a parole officer) to look after her finances and other matters. We also know that she is not someone to mess with; when the guardian turns out to be a thoroughly vile monster, Lisbeth gets back at him in one of the more satisfying revenge sequences in recent memory. That Lisbeth and Mikael should end up working together, and more, isn't especially surprising. But the horrifying details and depths of depravity they uncover while working on the case (parallels to The Silence of the Lambs are facile but appropriate) definitely are, and Opley does a nice job of keeping it all straight. At more than two and a half hours, the film is long, with its share of grim, graphic, and scary moments, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a winner. --Sam Graham
Swedish dialogue with English subtitles

The Science of Sleep 2006
Written and Directed by Michel Gondry
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg

The French magician and director Georges Méliès was arguably the first master of special effects, filling the silent movie houses of the early 20th century with camera trickery that stunned and delighted audiences. A century later, Michel Gondry works very much in the spirit of his artistic predecessor and countryman, creating films and music videos that feel just as hand-crafted and visually fantastical. The Science of Sleep concerns the flirtations and misunderstandings of Stéphane (Gael García Bernal, Babel), an aspiring visual artist, and Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 21 Grams), his Parisian neighbor who creates whimsical sculptures from cotton balls and felt. As Stéphane toils in a caustic office for a company that makes calendars, he retreats into his dreams and finds them increasingly hard to distinguish from reality, and vice-versa. The Science of Sleep is a trilingual film, with dialogue spoken in French, English, and Spanish by characters who are very much global citizens, crossing boundaries of consciousness as easily as they cross boundaries of culture. Gondry decorates his love story with deliberately low-tech special effects, including cellophane made to look like bath water and a subconscious television studio constructed largely of corrugated cardboard. This is filmmaking with all the seams and stitches exposed, an appreciation for the patent falseness of films that nonetheless transport and enchant us. It's dreamy. --Ryan Boudinot
English/Speanish/French dialogue with English/Spanish/French subtitles

Broken Embraces 2009
Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar

Pedro Almodóvar continues to reinvent Hollywood's Golden Age for a new era with Broken Embraces. A blind screenwriter in the present day, Mateo Blanco, a.k.a. Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), reminisces about his favorite leading lady to his assistant, Diego (Tamar Novas). In 1992, when Caine met Lena (Penélope Cruz), stockbroker Ernesto (José Luis Gómez) had just made the cash-strapped secretary his mistress. First, Ernesto pays for her mother's medical care; then he supports her dream to act. In the process, Caine casts her in his screwball comedy and falls in love, and a passionate affair begins. Ernesto suspects something is up, so he hires his shifty son, Ernesto Jr. (the off-key Rubén Ochandiano), to film the couple surreptitiously, and a lip reader translates their conversations. Caine's production manager, Judit (Volver's Blanca Portillo), further complicates the scenario. By the end, Caine, whose name serves as a tip of the hat to hard-boiled author James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), has lost his vision and his girl, and the culprit isn't as obvious as it seems. With Embraces, Almodóvar riffs on Tinseltown classics where greed and lust lead to death. If less successful than Live Flesh, a prior noir, his jigsaw storytelling remains just as riveting and his principal cast rises to the occasion, particularly Cruz, who plays a more passive character than usual and remains, much like Otto Preminger's Laura before her, a mystery that no one, not even the filmmaker, can ever completely solve. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
French/Spanish dialogue with English subtitles

Germany

Earthquake in Chile 1974

Directed by Helm Sanders-Brahms
Starring: Victor Alcazar, Julia Pena

Handsome Jeronimo is hired to tutor the rich heiress, Josefa. They fall in love, but the Church forbids their relationship, and Josefa is hidden in a convent. The Church discovers that she is pregnant and sentences her to death by decapitation. Jeronimo tracks her down but is jailed before he can rescue her. When Fate intervenes in the form of a massive earthquake, the two lovers have no idea what is in store for them.
Though shot in fascist Spain near the end of Francisco Franco s dictatorship, EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE could be relevant to any society where oppression kills the spirit of the people. (Facets)
German dialogue with English subtitles

Serbia

The Trap 2000
Directed by Srdan Golubovic
Starring: Neboj a Glogovac, Nata a Ninkovi

Post-Milosevic Belgrade is the capital of a nation struggling to find its soul, of a country whose turbulence has left many in a moral and existential desert. This is the home of Mladen, his wife Marija and their son Nemanja. When Nemanja develops a serious heart condition, the doctors urge an expensive operation abroad. Just when the boy s parents give up hope of raising the money, a man contacts Mladen and offers to pay the whole amount; in exchange, he must kill the man s business rival. The proposal repulses Mladen, but as his son s condition suddenly deteriorates, he begins to seriously consider the offer. If he accepts, he saves his boy s life but loses his soul; if he refuses, he will grieve as a righteous man until the end of his life. The trap is set.... (Film Movement)

Serbian dialogue with English subtitles

Directed by Lamberto Bava
Starring: Heorge Hilton, Patrizia Pellegrino

Four aspiring scream queens and a male comic, all seeking to break into the movie industry, are summoned to the castle of a reclusive horror director named Jurek (George Hilton), a charming bloodsucker who invites them to partake in a macabre game of survival. Awoken from his centuries-long slumber by a curious film crew, Jurek quickly adapts to the contemporary world by becoming a successful filmmaker. His bloody hits are box office gold, and the opportunity to appear in one of them could provide an aspiring actor with their big break. When his guests arrive to discuss their audition for Jurek's next feature, he reveals himself as a vampire and challenges to kill him before dawn, or die trying. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Italian dialogue with English subtitles.

Spain

What Have I Done to Deserve This? 1984
Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Starring: Carmen Maura,Luis Hostalot

Pedro Almodóvar scored his first international hit with What Have I Done to Deserve This?, cementing his reputation as Spain's bad-boy director of darkly comedic melodramas. Many of the themes that dominate Almodóvar's later films are evident here, especially his sympathetic affection for downtrodden women like Gloria (Carmen Maura), an exhausted housewife who's addicted to No-Dōz tablets and spends 18-hour days cleaning apartments and tending (just barely) to her teenage sons (one deals drugs, the other offers sex to local perverts), neglectful husband, and looney-tunes mother-in-law--all of whom have a particular knack for getting on her nerves. Toss in a prostitute neighbor, an accidental murder, and a pet lizard named "Money," and you've got the makings of a soap opera by way of Luis Buñuel and John Waters, served up with Almodóvar's distinctive blend of compassionate humanity and kinky outrageousness. --Jeff Shannon
Spanish dialogue with English subtitles