The Aura
[Feature] 
(2005, 129 min)
Espinosa is a master taxidermist and an epileptic who often speculates about committing the perfect crime. When his friend invites him on an ill-fated hunting trip, the opportunity to put his idle thoughts into action becomes a tantalizing reality. But Espinosa’s keen observational skills and meticulous planning may not be enough to navigate through the nefarious world he uncovers in the dark woods and backroads of southern Argentina. The latest from the director of Nine Queens is both a compelling character study and a moody, noirish thriller.  More...

Los Muertos
[Feature] 
(2004, 82 min)
Mystery is suspended, and perhaps even cancelled out, in Lisandro Alonso’s astonishing second feature, which follows a man released from prison who treks to his daughter’s home. It’s a journey forward yet also a return back in time, revealing the root of basic human needs and wants, primordial, yet never completely explicable. Among the challenging young Argentine cineastes, none is more startling or original than Alonso (La Libertad), whose openness to real time and a character’s inner world as revealed through nature continues here, but with far more unsettling implications.  More...

Side Walls
[Short] 
(2005, 29 min)
plays in Shorts Program #3

Within the high-rises of Buenos Aires, an evocative story of loneliness, alienation and serendipity unravels.  More...

Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man
[Mid-Length] 
(2005, 104 min)
plays with A Leonard Cohen Evening

Welcome Leonard Cohen to the Ford for a rare personal appearance, as we celebrate his life and music. Martha Wainwright will perform live, followed by a screening of Lian Lunson’s Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man.  More...

Love This Time
[Short] 
(2005, 18 min)
plays in Shorts Program #1

Nouria’s dad won’t get up, her brother wets the bed, and her boyfriend’s dog is dying, but love keeps her going.  More...

Stranded
[Feature] 
(2005, 52 min)
preceded by Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves

Stranded tells the sweet and sordid story of Claudia, a world-weary 17-year-old who attempts to flee the detritus of her impoverished family by camping out in her dead mother’s wheel-less car. Claudia’s boyfriend is a kleptomaniac, her father is catatonic and her toxically unhappy younger sister is prone to attack without warning. A kitchen-sink black comedy, the film’s bleakness is leavened by Emma Lung’s incandescent performance as Claudia, a young woman who never loses sight of the complete and funny absurdity of her situation.  More...

Babooska
[Feature] 
(2005, 100 min)
20-year-old Babooska doesn’t have to run away to join the circus. She already spends her life criss-crossing Italy with her family’s traveling show, setting up their big top tent in small towns and hoping someone, anyone, will buy a ticket to their performances. Following Babooska and her family with their cameras, co-directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel take an objective, episodic journey through a year in the life of contemporary wanderers striving to hang on to, and make the most of, their place at the margins of society and just outside of the spotlight.  More...

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine
[Short] 
(2005, 17 min)
plays in Shorts Program #5

The Experimental joins The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when Eli Wallach is challenged to a showdown by the avant-garde.  More...

Our Daily Bread
[Feature] 
(2005, 92 min)
Like Baraka or Triumph of the Will, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s sparse, near-silent documentary about food-manufacturing factories knows its ghostly images are stunning enough to stand alone without narration. Splicing between unnamed men in space suits spraying peppers to surrealist landscapes where soft yellow chicks shoot out of slides by the hundreds and orchards of apples bob in a titanic swimming pool, this restrained yet riveting film underscores the fascinating polarity that such a messy business as eating starts in these robotic dreamscapes.  More...

Looking for Alfred
[Short] 
(2005, 10 min)
plays in Shorts Program #5

The surrealistic presence of Hitchcock look-alikes and doubles pays homage to his cinematic legacy.  More...

Rwanda, The Hills Speak
[Feature] 
(2005, 50 min)
preceded by Journey Into Sunset

The Gacaca tribunals are an attempt to bring accountability and reconciliation to bear on the Rwandan genocide. But while the process has brought closure to some, it is far from perfect, as seen in this riveting documentary. One accused murderer has a number of relatives judging his case, while another simply refuses to admit any wrongdoing. Meanwhile a woman refuses to reconcile with the man who killed her husband — her brother-in-law. For no matter what the successes of the Gacacas are, some wounds are simply too deep to heal.  More...

House of Sand
[Feature] 
(2005, 115 min)
In 1910, pregnant bride Áurea and her mother,Maria, are left to fend for themselves in the Brazilian desert when Áurea’s husband dies. When Maria discovers that they are actually near an ocean inlet and a settlement of runaway slaves, the women find an initially uneasy salvation. Though their dreams of escape never die, the two begin to adjust to the rhythm of their alien surroundings. Amid hypnotic vistas of a forbidding landscape, real-life mother and daughter Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres give tour-de-force performances as three generations of women who discover freedom in the least expected place.  More...