Film Archive

Master Kitano’s (also known as comedian Beat Takeshi) latest directorial effort, is a return to comedy. The story goes around retired former yakuza boss Ryuzo living a boring life. Together with his former right hand man, after one too many sake, they come up with the crazy idea of creating a team of old yakuzas – But what started as a laughing stock gradually becomes a confrontation between the old and the young yakuzas leading to a showdown.

Károly Ujj Mészáros’ first feature takes place in the 1970s Hungary and follows Liza, a bright young nurse who loves all things Japanese. Tony Tani, her Nipponic Frank Sinatra imaginary friend, often appears to Liza, dancing and singing for her. An evil shape-shifting Japanese spirit known as a foxfairy, a demon who sucks the souls out of men, is the cause of Liza’s bad luck. An Amélie inspired dark fairytale delivers a genre-bending black comedy with a touch of Hungarian humor.

A romantic comedy that swings an alternative love triangle, between fiction and literature: Marie (Vimala Pons) is an alluring young woman and “very dangerous”, as Antoine (Eric Cantona), her melancholic ex-boyfriend writer, warns Simeon (Pierre Rochefort) a jobless journalist. Antoine and Simeon are both funnily obsessed by an elusive Marie. This adventure of desperate souls takes place between Paris and an island in Brittany, between reality and a story that is being written

An absurd plot (an old parrot provokes a diplomatic conflict between France and the Czech Republic for its revelations about a hidden aspect of the outbreak of World War II) leads to a hilarious behind-the-scenes story about the making a film by a group of equally idealist and mindless Czechs. Film and theather director Zelenka delivers a film that reflects on the Czech identity and the nature of comedy storytelling without neglecting the most important aspect: being real funny.

Xavier Seron’s first feature film is set in a tragicomic world that follows a hypochondriac man who seems to develop the same symptoms of his mother (breast cancer). The striking black and white images give us trivial view of life and death throuhg its farcical humour filled with plays on words, caricatures and schoolboy humour. In this fantastical world of gentle madness the director leads the actors, filming them with the benevolence of someone who shares their doubts and neuroses, filling them with humanity.

After the hilarious Three More Weddings (Best Film at the 2014 Monte-Carlo Film Festival), Javier Ruiz Caldera move to the action genre with Anacleto, based on the characters created by legendary cartoonist Vázquez. Yet another proof of his versatility and his ability to make cool comedies without imposing his personality. Shootings, chases and screamingly funny scenes (the truth serum episode is simply priceless) accompany the invincible Anacleto (Arias) in his struggle with the evil Vazquez (Areces), for which he will need the help of his timid son Adolfo (Gutierrez)

Acclaimed short film Oscar-winning director (Election Night) and co-screenwriter of Susanne Bier’s Oscar-winning In a Better World, Anders Thomas Jensen’s latest film Men & Chicken is by far his most difficult to classify: a dark comedy bending through genres that investigates a disfunctional family composed by five ill-mannered and bizarrely disfigured half-brothers brought together by their father’s death. The film’s location(s) and rotten atmosphere are the perfect ingredients for a cult horror movie, but the riotously transgressive satire on family and eugenics, offers a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on what makes us human.

Robert Carlyle’s (Francis Begbie’s Trainspotting and Full Monty‘s star “Gaz”) directorial debut is a macabre comedy with a touch of urban thriller. Carlyle also plays Barney Thompson, a socially inept barber from Glasgow who’s suspected to be the gruesome murderer of young men whose body parts are sent to various Scottish villages. The anachronistic 50s/60s look and a wonderful foul-mouthed Emma Thompson (Barney’s mother) are the perfect ingredients for this delicious grotesque story with a touch of realism.

Irreverent, grotesque, imperfect, sophisticated and bold, violent and physical, cult-ish and popular. My Big Night is a perfect compendium of De la Iglesia’s filmmaking. A former enfant terrible, he has become one of Europe’s strongest auteurs. His 12th film takes place in a TV studio where a New Year’s Eve program is being taped. The perfect scenario (arguably the most untrue TV program) to mix genres and play with the fine line that separates truth and fiction. The studio is populated by a veritable motley crew: the beautiful and jinxed femme fatale, the ordinary extra and his superstitious mother, the corrupt manager, the TV hosts in eternal and merciless competition, the legendary singer who has to face the next generation, his own son and his insane fans..

Today no one follows a dream anymore, nor an ideal, not even money, everyone looks for his lost youth. If you are young you are ‘in’, if you are old you are ‘out’. This is the story of a group of ‘forever young’, set in Italy nowadays. Franco (Teo Teocoli) is a lawyer, a charged-up sixty year old, a sport lover, a marathon man in particular. His life changes when he finds out he’s is about to become a grandfather thanks to his daughter Marta and her husband Lorenzo and that he is not invincible anymore. Angela is a forty-eight beautician who’s having an affair with twenty year old Luca, against his mother’s will, Sonia, a friend of Angela’s. Diego, a middle aged deejay has to face the years passing by and a new young and bald rival. Giorgio is fifty, he has a very young girlfriend but he cheats on her with his almost fifty years old physiotherapist. Who will he chose at the end?

Maggie (Parker), an uptight single mother who teaches college writing courses in New York City, and her former Italian lover, Luca (Bova), go on an exciting road trip across Italy pursuing Maggie’s rebellious teenage daughter, Summer (Day), who tries desperately to return to the US. Meanwhile, Luca’s mother, Carmen (Cardinale) is on a secret mission to reunite with her long lost love. Set against the magnificent backdrop of Rome and other Italian locations, this romantic comedy will provide tons of glamour and fun for the audience of Monte-Carlo.