My top 25 of SIFF 2011
List activity
1.2K views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
25 titles
- DirectorYasemin SamdereliStarsVedat ErincinFahri YardimLilay HuserThe story of three generations of a Turkish immigrant family.
- DirectorOday RasheedStarsAsaad Abdul MajeedAlaa NajemHattam AudaCrime, passion and childhood innocence in an Iraqi tale.
- DirectorAndreas ÖhmanStarsBill SkarsgårdMartin WallströmCecilia ForssA younger brother with Aspergers syndrome helps his older brother find a girlfriend.
- DirectorEd Gass-DonnellyStarsJill HennessyAmy RutherfordPeter StormareA modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.
- DirectorMohammad RasoulofStarsHassan PourshiraziYounes GhazaliMohammad RabbaniRahmat has been asked to meet the inhabitants of these islands to collect their tears. Although for years people have been giving their tears to Rahmat, no one knows exactly what he has been doing with them.
- DirectorDeron AlbrightStarsYao B. NunooFred Nii AmugiAbena TakyiInspector Boniface Koomsin, a Ghanaian police detective, embarks on a dangerous, crime-laden journey to recover the one thing he needs to realize his ultimate dream-- to escape the ghosts of his past and return to America.
- DirectorYulene OlaizolaStarsLuisa PardoSalomón HernándezJuan J. Reyes AcuasLuisa is 25 years old and fighting a heroin addiction. Having escaped the city she finds herself seeking repose in a fading beach resort that rests on the lush seaside hills of Veracruz, Mexico.
- DirectorJunfeng BooStarsJoshua Barker TanElena ChiaBobbi ChenEn is a Singaporean student that will soon be enlisted in the army. While his mother is away, he has to stay with his grandparents. Thus, he starts learning new things about his missing father.
- DirectorChristoffer BoeStarsJens AlbinusIgor RadosavljevicMarijana JankovicJacob Falk, a writer/director known for becoming obsessed with his own stories, stumbles upon photographs of prisoners of war being tortured by Danish soldiers. Suspecting a political conspiracy, Falk falls into a frenetic chase to reveal the mystery behind the photos, which leads him to discover a much more disturbing truth.
- DirectorQuan'an WangStarsLisa LuFeng LingCaigen XuLiu returns to his native city Shanghai after 50 years spent in Taiwan. He has come to find the first love of his life, Qiao, who he left behind pregnant. In the meantime, Qiao has married and formed a family. But Liu is determined to get the family's approval to take her away with him.
- DirectorKoen MortierStarsWim WillaertTitus De VoogdtSam LouwyckA bomb explodes in a shopping mall. Sam the security agent tries to save the victims, but at the end he runs off. Later he encounters all the people he saved. They all think that somehow he is responsible for what happened.
- DirectorRachid BoucharebStarsJamel DebbouzeRoschdy ZemSami BouajilaA drama about the Algerian struggle for independence from France after WWII.
- DirectorRyan RedfordStarsGarret DillahuntMolly ParkerDonal LogueFeeling lost and disconnected, with no family of his own, veteran Sherman Oliver sets out to the countryside in search of the soldier who saved him back in the war. That man, Franklin Page, has long since moved on - to a wife, two children, and a reliable job in a reliably safe and quiet rural town. Upon arriving, Sherman seems at first a harmless if awkward shell of a man. But as he inserts himself further into the Pages' life, he reveals himself to be an angry, unstable individual prone to great jealousy and deep resentment. The stability Franklin worked so hard to establish is soon threatened, and the violence he believed he'd left behind in the war begins to re-emerge and cloud over both the household and the town itself.
- DirectorJeon Kyu-hwanStarsLee Joon-hyukRa Mi-ranSeul-gi NoA North Korean refugee, Jung-Nim, is trying to find a new life in South Korea, with people suspecting that she is a spy.
- DirectorMahamat-Saleh HarounStarsYoussouf DjaoroDiouc KomaEmile Abossolo M'boPresent-day Chad. Adam, fifty-five, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N'Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel. Terribly resentful, he feels socially humiliated. The country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government. The authorities demand that the population contribute to the "war effort", giving money or volunteers old enough to fight off the assailants. The District Chief constantly harasses Adam for his contribution. But Adam is penniless; he only has his son....
- DirectorMaryam KeshavarzStarsSarah KazemyNikohl BoosheriReza Sixo SafaiA wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's dangerous obsession.
- DirectorAlice NellisStarsPremysl BuresZuzana BydzovskáFilip CapkaInterconnected stories revolving around children; a fertility doctor loses her only child; a couple tries desperately to conceive; an unmarried woman gets pregnant and wants to abort, but her boyfriend wants to keep the baby; a poor woman who can barely afford to raise her two young children finds herself pregnant again.
- DirectorChris KrausStarsPaula BeerEdgar SelgeTambet TuiskIn the summer of 1914, thirteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea. Oda arrives there bearing her mother's coffin and a gift requested by her surgeon father: a jarred, two-headed fetus to add to his laboratory of gruesome curiosities. Ebbo von Siering (Edgar Selge) sees himself in his daughter when she calmly and expertly learns to suture the corpse of a cat. What he fails to recognize - and what Oda luckily understands - is that their interest in science is their only similarity. His dedication to experimentation is linked to an appalling obsession with power and destruction, while Oda is genuinely curious about life. Her quick, quiet intelligence complements her humanity and her lucid understanding of right and wrong. When she strays from a family picnic and discovers a badly wounded Estonian anarchist, she helps him without a second thought, smuggling him into her father's lab and putting her new surgical skills to good use. As their illicit friendship deepens, family turmoil escalates and war closes in. The safe haven of the community collapses, forcing Oda's family to make impossible choices.
- DirectorClaudio CupelliniStarsToni ServilloMarco D'AmoreFrancesco Di LevaThe story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead. Instead, he was living in a little hotel near Frankfurt, with a wife and a young German son. Then, when the trains filled with waste departed from Naples, the past climbed on board. This is the story of a man who, while trying to kill a chestnut tree with a copper nail, was grabbed from behind by his past. And was forced to settle the score.
- DirectorMike OttStarsAtsuko OkatsukaCory ZachariaRintaro Sawamoto"Littlerock" is a powerfully intimate drama that captures the fears and desires of a young Japanese woman lost in America.
- DirectorMarius HolstStarsBenjamin HelstadTrond NilssenStellan SkarsgårdNorwegian winter, early 20th century. On the boys home Bastoy, a new inmate leads the boys to a violent uprising against a brutal regime. How far is he willing to go to attain freedom?
- DirectorAgustí VillarongaStarsFrancesc ColomerMarina ComasNora NavasIn the harsh post-war years' Catalan countryside, Andreu, a child that belongs to the losing side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.
- DirectorJuanita WilsonStarsNatasha PetrovicFedja StukanJelena JovanovaA young female teacher from Sarajevo who travels to a remote village. Soon after arriving, the village is attacked by a group of soldiers. The men are killed, the women separated from the children, and placed in a makeshift brothel.
- DirectorAndrew Okpeaha MacLeanStarsJosiah PatkotakFrank Qutuq IrelanJohn MillerIn Barrow, Alaska, teenagers Qalli and Aivaaq find their bond tested when a seal-hunting trip goes wrong, resulting in the death of their friend.
- DirectorAlain CorneauStarsLudivine SagnierKristin Scott ThomasPatrick MilleRuthless executive Christine brings on young Isabelle as her assistant taking delight in toying with her innocence. But when Christine starts passing on her protege's ideas as her own, things take a dark turn.