Category:Movie to Watch

Movie to Watch

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-- Poil de carotte (1925) <VIDEO-D 49127-D - h17502>

A powerful story of child neglect that resonates with relevancy. At times Francois's life seems miserable: his mother resents him, derisively calling him 'Carrot Top', his siblings torment him, and his father ignores him.

-- Poil de carotte (1932) <VIDEO-D 67542-D - h40080>

François' mother, Mme Lepic, hates him and she nicknames him "Poil de Carotte" (Carrot hair). His father is more interested in politics and hunting than he is in him. In spite of the affection of his godfather and his friend Mathilde, whom he calls his "fiancée", young Poil de Carotte contemplates suicide. On a particularly difficult day, he attempts to hang himself. Mr. Lepic saves his life just in time and understands he is partly to blame.

-- The Revolt of Job (1983) <VIDEO-D 74486-D - H53549> -- <Holocaust>

A young Gentile orphan is adopted by a Jewish farmer and his wife, who fear the coming of the Nazis. The story is told from the perspective of the child, giving poignancy to a familiar theme.

-- Reunion (1989) <VIDEO-D 71201-D - h43698> -- <Holocaust>

Henry Strauss, a New York business lawyer, travels to Stuttgart, the town he'd left in 1932 at the age of 16. Then he was known as Hans Strauss; he was Jewish. His best friend, Konrad, was the son of an aristocrat. Hitler's rise to power caused them to separate, and after 50 years in exile, Henry's searching to find out what happened to his friend.

-- This Boy's Life (1993) < VIDEO-D 35905-D - h3109>

Caroline just wants to settle down in one place, find a decent guy, and provide a better home for her handful of a son, Toby. When she moves to Seattle and meets Dwight, she thinks she's got it made. Toby, however, feels differently after spending time with Dwight while away from Caroline. Dwight seems to want to mold Toby into a better person, but to do so he emotionally, verbally, and physically abuses the kid. The marriage proceeds, and soon Caroline, too, recognizes Dwight's need to dominate everyone around him. son, and several years of dysfunction ensue.

-- Dust of Life (1995) <VIDEO-D 55907-D - h24880>

Shortly after the fall of Saigon, internal disruption further destroyed North and South Vietnam. Northern soldiers are convinced the Southern population has become corrupted by imperialistic ideas. Determined to change the Southern population, North Vietnamese soldiers roam the streets, picking up orphaned boys for transport to rehabilitation camps. Living conditions at the camps are deplorable, especially for Bob, Son, and Shrimp, who are struggling to survive at the Phu Van camp.

-- Beneath Cloud (2002) <VIDEO-D 52295-D - h21923> -- See also: Rabbit-Proof Fence (); and Walkabout ()

Lena is a fair-skinned girl with an Aboriginal mother. She rejects the indigenous family that surrounds her and longs for the love of her Irish father. Vaughn is a dark-skinned teenage boy who lives in a prison camp. He is angry at the 'white' world that surrounds him. These two hardened souls escape from their worlds in a struggle for purpose, identity, and love.

-- Mysterious Skin (2004) <VIDEO-D 46203-D - h13329>

At age 8, Neil and Brian played on the same baseball team in their small Kansas hometown. Now 10 years later, Neil is a hustler and Brian a nervous introvert who believes he has been abducted by aliens. As their lives intersect, they discover a shared past shrouded in mystery.

-- Äideistä parhain = Mother of mine (2005) <VIDEO-D 75752-D - h47337>

During World War II, 70,000 Finnish children were shipped off to Swedish families who had agreed to shelter them for their own protection until the end of the war. This is the story of one such boy, Eero. After the death her husband, grief stricken Kirsti agrees with great reluctance to send Eero to Sweden. His surrogate parents, Signe and Hjalmar, are grieving the recent loss of a daughter. Signe is so deeply wounded that all semblance of beauty has been sapped from her life, and her relationship with Eero is fraught with tension and resentment. After a lifetime of feeling abandoned, bereft of parental love, Eero learns the secrets behind the actions of his two mothers too late.

-- Sweet Mud (Israel, 2006) <VIDEO-D 71639-D - h44340>

On a kibbutz in southern Israel, 12-year-old Dvir (Tomer Steinhof) must endure grueling tests of manhood--but these trials pale in comparison with the troubles brought on by his mother, Miri (Ronit Yudkevitch) whose sanity is quickly fading. As the community ostracizes Miri, young Dvir begins to question the kibbutz's rigid, utopian rules in this episodic coming-of-age tale that won the Dramatic World Cinema Jury Prize at Sundance 2007.

-- Boy (2010) <VIDEO-D 64772-D - h36412>

'Boy' is a dreamer who lives with his brother Rocky and his Nan. When Boy's father, Alamein, returns home after seven years away, Boy is forced to confront the man he thought he remembered, find his own potential, and learn to get along without the hero he had been looking for.

-- Dancing Arabs (Israel, 2014) <VIDEO-D 76690-D - h47708>

Gifted Eyad, a Palestinian Israeli boy, is given the chance to go to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem. As he desperately tries to fit in with his Jewish schoolmates and within Israeli society, Eyad develops a friendship with another outsider, Jonathan, a boy suffering from muscular dystrophy, and gradually becomes part of the home Jonathan shares with his mother, Edna.

-- Spotlight (2015) <VIDEO-D 67963-D - h40868>

The riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world's oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper's tenacious 'Spotlight' team of reporters delve into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's religious, legal, and government establishment.

-- Anbessa (2019) <VIDEO-D 80640-D - H70446>

Ten-year-old Asalif and his mother have been displaced from their farmland on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the construction of a condominium. As they watch the buildings take shape, they are reminded in small and big ways that their country's dream of "progress" is not for them.