Hope
Contemporary Cinema
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2h 5m
Directed by Maria Sødahl | 125 mins | 2019
A terminal cancer diagnosis for choreographer Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig, recently seen in Dag Johan Haugerud’s "Love"), during the holiday season, no less, reveals the deep fissures in her 20-year marriage to theater director Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård) in this superbly wrought Norwegian drama—its affecting subtlety undoubtedly deriving in part from writer-director Maria Sødahl’s personal experience with such a diagnosis, alongside the deeply lived in performances of the film’s leads.
Up Next in Contemporary Cinema
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I Am Not a Witch
Directed by Rungano Nyoni | 93 mins | 2017
A young Zambian girl is accused of being a witch and then pressed into soothsaying service by a slick government official in this strikingly shot deadpan satire. Skewering superstition and corruption, it’s a feminist exposé of exploitation done with dazz... -
Lore
Directed by Cate Shortland | 109 mins | 2012
Cate Shortland followed her moody and startling feature debut, "Somersault" (2004), with another bruising story of a teen girl expelled from home—in this case, by history in the making. Abandoned by her high-level Nazi parents in the wake of Hitler’s d... -
Millennium Mambo
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien | 107 mins | 2001
A seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou’s much-misunderstood marvel follows an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards a suave, sensitive gangster. A transfixing trance-out of a mov...
