Tunisia's first woman director, Moufida Tlatli, looks at the status of women in the Arab Muslim world, and offers an impassioned challenge to the institutions of male privilege. Silences takes place in the 1950s, almost entirely in the palace of the wealthy Prince Sid'Ali and focuses on the harem-like community of female servants who clean, cook and indulge his sexual needs. Alia is the bright, sensitive daughter of one of those women, and grows up not knowing who her father is. By locating the drama within the palace, and rarely showing the world that surrounds it, Tlatli underscores the imprisonment of Alia and her mother. In Arabic with English subtitles.
Brother is a violent and dark film about the new Russia in which crime is the only stable business.
Danila is a young man just released from the army who can't find a job in his provincial home town. He travels to St. Petersburg and becomes an assassin for the Chechine mob. In Russian with English subtitles. This period martial arts action film takes place during the turbulent, repressive Qing dynasty, when the Manchus ruled China, enacting a great amount of unjust law on the Hans. For instance, all the female Han infants were made to bind their feet so that when they grew up they would be dependent upon their parents or husband.