Los Amantes del Circulo Polar

A story of circular lives, with circular names, and a circular place.

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City of God

The streets of the world's most notorious slum, Rio de Janeiro's "City of God," are a place where combat photographers fear to tread, police rarely go, and residents are lucky if they live to the age of 20. In the midst of the oppressive crime and violence, a frail and scared young boy will grow up to discover that he can view the harsh realities of his surroundings with a different eye: the eye of an artist. In the face of impossible odds, his brave ambition to become a professional photographer becomes a window into his world ... and ultimately his way out!

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Das Leben der Anderen

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

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The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

You might even begin reconsidering your relationship with the animal kingdom and questioning the distance you put between yourself and nonhuman species.
-- Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

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Fantastic Mr. Fox

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is visionary director Wes Anderson’s first animated film, utilizing classic handmade stop motion techniques to tell the story of the best selling children’s book by Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach). The film features the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker Mr and Mrs Fox (Clooney and Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristopherson (Eric Anderson). But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr Fox at any cost.

Síðasti bærinn (2004)

In a remote corner of Iceland, winter is coming on. An aging farmer named Hrafn is doing his last chores before leaving reluctantly with his wife Gróa for a retirement home in the city. Their daughter Lilja will be coming after the weekend to pick them up. She calls her parents, interrupting her dad's lunch. Her mother is napping. The stoic Hrafn wants to make his daughter won't come before Monday. What are these last chores?

watch the film below (look for the oscar)

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Joyeux Noël (2005)

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This movie is inspired by a true story, which happened during World War I, at Christmas Eve 1914, in many different places of the battlefront.

In 1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes one such section as the French, Scottish and German sides partake in the unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not tolerate its occurrence.

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Le Scaphandre et le papillon (2007)

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) is one of the most poetic films ever made and my personal favorite. Julian Schnabel's work focuses on the lives of other artists. As an fine artist himself he brings a unique sensibility to each project. He completed Basquiat in 1996 and Before Night Falls in 2000. Less is certainly more in this case.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life was like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. It also details what his life was before the stroke.

On December 8, 1995, Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, in July and August 1996. 

A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors.

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Låt den rätte komma in (2008)

Spoiler alert, you should stop reading this review and watch this film without watching trailers. I highly recommend watching it alone in a dark theater but if you need company tell your guests to shut it! If you insist on watching a trailer before you go see a film you can visit the link below.

This film is about a fragile, anxiou boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy's wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him.

But Eli's arrival coincides with a series of gruesome deaths and attacks. Though Oskar realizes that she' a vimpire, his friendship with her is stronger than his fear...

Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson weaves friendship, rejection and loyalty into a disturbing, darkly atmospheric, yet unexpectedly tender tableau of adolescence. The feature is based on the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which the U.K. press qualified as "reminiscent of Stephen King at his best."

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Man on Wire (2008)

Philippe Petit captured the world's attention in 1974 when he successfully walked across a high wire between New York's Twin Towers. This documentary (nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar) explores the preparations that went into the stunt as well as the event and its aftermath. Obsessed with the towers even before they were fully constructed, Petit sneaked into the buildings several times to determine the equipment he needed to accomplish his daring feat.

watch the trailer for this amazing doc