TOP 500 LETTERBOXD

1940 film directed by Ernst Lubitsch

1988 film by Krzysztof Kieślowski

1981 film by João César Monteiro

The Kinema Junpo critics were, of course, mistaken to think that Naruse had abandoned his emphasis on women. His next film, Sincerity, features two strong female characters, played by Irie Takako and Murase Sachiko, each of whom have a daughter. The girls are schoolmates, but one (Nobuko) is from a middle-class home and the other (Tomiko) is from a poor family. Tomiko's mother Tsutako (Irie) is a single mother who works from home as a seamstress, while Nobuko's mother lives in an elegant home with her husband, Kei. Eventually, it is revealed that Kei had a romantic relationship with Tsutako, and may be Tomiko's father as well, but he is conscripted shortly after this revelation and goes off to war.
This is very much a home front film, in which the women are involved in supporting activities, and the whole town cheers on the new recruits. As Kei is a banker, he is conscripted as an officer. He is introduced brandishing a magnificent sword, indicating his readiness for his call-up, for which everyone congratulates him when it comes. The wartime context is little more than a backdrop to the story of paternity and former love. The complex emotions among the women are conveyed through cutting on eye movements and eye lines, and through the use of the pastoral location.

An amorous lieutenant is forced to marry a socially awkward princess, though he tries to keep his violin-playing girlfriend on the side.

到美國只三年，劉別謙已成首席導演，劉別謙筆觸這個詞兒開始出現，仿效導演無數。已是傳奇人物的他，對人家學步毫不在乎，翻翻手閒閒的又示範了一部抄也抄不來的妙品。醫生夫婦恩愛日子平靜如白開水，百無聊賴的太太將跌宕感情昇華在通俗愛情小說裏，直至一天小說中的美男袒胸在對窗出現。那邊廂，醫生碰上美男的豪放妻，卻原來是舊相好。兩對夫婦各懷鬼主意，不忠的結局出人意表。默片的喜劇動感在這裏妙不可言，手杖做偷情藉口這種神來之筆，也許可以叫大家意會什麼叫劉別謙筆觸。

The last of Lubitsch's silent sex comedies is exuberant, fanciful and teasingly elliptical at the same time. Since Paris is synonymous with sophistication and risqué romance, he deliberately cultivates the mood for love with an opening shot of a bed, subverting audience expectations of the obligatory Eiffel Tower. With equal subtlety, he gives his stock and trade subject of marital infidelities inventive treatment, wittily satirising "sheik fever" and other sex-oriented fads in the erotic masquerades between a doctor, his wife, his old flame and her husband. Unlike many Hollywood contemporaries, where sexual innuendoes serve only as evasions and euphemisms, in this film, they are bold announcements of the real thing.

Source: 28th HKIFF

A psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet called Solaris to investigate the death of a doctor and the mental problems of cosmonauts on the station. He soon discovers that the water on the planet is a type of brain which brings out repressed memories and obsessions.

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Two neighbours — a persecuted journalist and a resigned housewife — forge a strong bond on the day of Adolf Hitler's historic 1938 visit to Rome.

1973 film by Víctor Erice

A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.

Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with the loveable robot duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore peace and justice in the Empire.

Mavka, mermaid forest, and Lucas, a simple village boy, to love one another. But Lucas gave them a feeling for that, and was deprived of his musical gift - the ability to play the sopelke. Generous Mavka buy talent loved the price of his life.

In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.

A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.

Having met on a train, a smooth-talking psychotic socialite shares his theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder to an amateur tennis player — a theory he plans to test out.

A servant girl is seduced and abandoned by her lover, a man from a higher social class, forcing her to navigate a harsh world as an itinerant performer to survive and raise their child.

After the end of WWII, a young Lithuanian woman and a young Italian man from Stromboli impulsively marry, but married life on the island is more demanding than she can accept.

After an old college friend offers him a job at an iron foundry, the upright and honest Ishwar leaves a shanty town on the outskirts of Calcutta where he lives with a group of refugees from East Bengal. With plans to forge a solid living for himself, sister Sita and Abhiram, an orphaned boy he offers a home to, Ishwar is accused of selling out and deserting his people.