To celebrate the 4K remaster of Tales from the Gimli Hospital Redux by Guy Maddin, Canadian film distributor Films We Like has commissioned Winnipeg-based artist and designer Galen Johnson to create a limited edition print signed by director Guy Maddin.
Set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, Tales From The Gimli Hospital is a dreamlike, elliptical film which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room "in a Gimli we no longer know."
With his first film in seven years, director Jerzy Skolimowski directs one of his most free and visually inventive films yet, following the travels of a nomadic grey donkey named EO. After being removed from the traveling circus, which is the only life he’s ever known, EO begins a trek across the Polish and Italian countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness in equal measure, all the while observing the follies and triumphs of humankind.
Films We Like has acquired the Canadian rights to Sierra Pettengill’s riveting documentary Riotsville, USA. Pettengill uses unearthed military training footage of Army-built model towns called “Riotsvilles,” where military and police were trained to respond to civil unrest in the late sixties. Film Critic Susannah Gruber in Indiewire wrote: “This unique framework succeeds in turning history on its head, forcing us to question how these violent tactics from the past have led to the increasingly armed present we're witnessing today.”
Canadian distributor Films We Like announces the acquisition of Let There Be Drums!, a new documentary film by Justin Kreutzmann, son of Grateful Dead’s drummer Bill Kreutzmann. The on-beat documentary features a constellation of all-star drummers who examine the essential role drumming plays in popular music.
Joe Papp, founder of The Public Theater, Free Shakespeare in the Park and producer of groundbreaking plays like "Hair," "A Chorus Line" and "for colored girls," created a 'theater of inclusion' based on the belief that great art is for everyone.
Benoit Magimel stars as a high ranking government official in French Polynesia, dealing with hearsay sightings of a submarine whose ghostly presence could herald the return of French nuclear testing. Film Critic Peter Bradshaw wrote, “Pacifiction is an authentic descent into darkness.”
Shot on vivid 16mm film over a three-year period, the documentary chronicles notoriously shy, Melbourne-based musician Courtney Barnett’s ups and downs on the world tour for her album Tell Me How You Really Feel. Featuring Barnett’s unguarded narration from her audio diary, recorded on a dictaphone provided by filmmaker Danny Cohen, the film delivers frank and unprecedented insight into Barnett’s creative process, the sacrifices and inner conflicts set in motion by fame, and the sometimes dark backdrop to her whimsical, relatably poetic compositions.
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE is an immersion into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island, guided by naturalist and environmentalist Zoe Lucas who has lived over 40 years on this remote sliver of land in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Shot on 16mm and created using a scope of innovative eco-friendly filmmaking techniques, this feature-length experimental documentary is a playful and reverent collaboration with the natural world. Zoe leads us among wild horses, seals and bugs, through peaks, valleys, roots, sands, weathers, seasons and stars. The intangible is evoked with hidden sounds and vanishing light. Much like a field book, the film tracks its protagonist's labor to collect, clean and document marine litter that persistently washes up on the island shores.
Dunstan Bruce is 59 and he’s struggling with the fact that the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart. He’s wondering where did it all go wrong? For him. For humanity. But how does a middle-aged, retired radical, who now feels invisible get back up again? This is the untold and remarkable story of Chumbawamba and Dunstan’s personal redemptive voyage as well as a call to arms to those who think activism is best undertaken by someone else.
Bucharest, 1972. Ana, 17, dreams of love and freedom. One night, while partying with her friends, they decide to send a letter to Metronom, the musical program which Radio Free Europe broadcasts clandestinely in Romania. It is then that the Securitate, Ceausescu’s secret police, arrives.
Directed by Mikhaël Hers (Amanda, Venice award winner 2018), THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT is a nuanced portrait of a Parisian family in the 1980s. Featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg, the film had its world premiere at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival.
Solomon, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, lives and works in a New York City recycling center. Convinced that his missing mother has been abducted by aliens, he has built himself a radio telescope to intercept possible communications from outer space. He meets by chance the attractive Chuyao, an employee of a nail salon in an irregular situation, who also shares a personal interest in UFOs. After a violent altercation with her thuggish boyfriend, the two left behind escape to the West in search of the truth.
The critically acclaimed neo-Western stars Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague as two estranged siblings who return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved, where they confront a deep and bitter family legacy against a mythic American backdrop.
Murat is incarcerated in the U.S.’ Guantanamo detention camp. Desperate to help her son, Rabiye Kurnaz, a housewife and loving mother from Bremen, goes to the police, notifies authorities and almost despairs at their impotence, until she discovers Bernhard Docke. The reserved, level-headed human rights lawyer and the temperamental Turkish mother – now fighting side-by-side for Murat’s release. Docke is patient, Rabiye is not. She’d actually prefer to be back home with her family but finds herself totally enmeshed in world politics. She goes with Bernhard to Washington, and right up to the Supreme Court to bring legal action against George W. Bush. Bernhard watches out for her. And Rabiye makes him laugh. With heart and soul. And in the end, against all the odds, something truly remarkable happens.
Panah Panahi, son and collaborator of embattled Iranian master Jafar Panahi, makes a striking feature debut with Hit the Road, a charming, sharp-witted, and deeply moving comic drama. First presented at the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, Hit the Road has won multiple international film festival awards including Best Film at last fall’s BFI London Film Festival.
When Flowers Are Not Silent looks at the aftermath of protests in Belarus against the country’s long-standing leader Alexander Lukashenka – who in 2020 claimed more than 80% of all votes – after the European Union, local opposition and a large part of the population called foul on the election results.
On election night in 1981, celebrations spill out onto the street and there is an air of hope and change throughout Paris. But for Elisabeth, her marriage is coming to an end and she will now have to support herself and her two teenage children. She finds work at a late-night radio show and encounters a troubled teenager named Talulah whom she invites into her home. With them, Talulah experiences the warmth of a family for the first time. Although she suddenly disappears, her free spirit has a lasting influence. Elisabeth and her children grow in confidence and begin to take risks, changing the trajectory of their lives.
Films We Like is thrilled to announce that DRIVE MY CAR is on the road to the Oscars with four Academy Awards nominations. Lauded by audiences and critics, the Japanese Oscar entry directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, is a contender for four Academy Awards:
BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
Films We Like celebrates the re-opening of cinemas with 2021’s most acclaimed film Drive My Car. Audiences across Canada can now discover the Cannes award winning film that is on over forty years best lists including the Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best International Film.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s award-winning film, adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, is a haunting road movie that travels a path of love, loss, acceptance, and peace.
