Stolen Lives (USA)

Detective Tom Adkins’ son Tommy Jr. disappears on a fateful Fourth of July afternoon, and in the ensuing eight years Tom’s work becomes an obsession for him. Tom attempts to solve the case of his missing son, but his efforts have yielded only one solid suspect – an already jailed and convicted kidnapper named Roggiani, whose current sentence is on the verge of being commuted – and no concrete proof. An early morning phone call leads Tom to the mangled remains of a young boy, buried in a box beneath the ground. At first Tom believes that the victim could be Tommy Jr., but forensic evidence reveals that this boy was murdered 50 years prior. Driven to solve the murder as a means of exorcising his own demons, Tom uncovers the long-forgotten mystery of a man named Matthew Wakefield and the disappearance of his son John.

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Rare Fish (Singapore)

Ribud has recently lost his wife. Iah and her son Roby try to comfort him. He eventually drags a heavy metal motor outside and gets on a boat. He rides out further and ties the motor around his ankles. He starts to heave the motor over the side until he sees Roby's body floating in the water, and brings the body back to Iah.

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Shorty (India)

After his parents die, nine-year old Chivlya is taken away by his uncle. Chivlya works as a water boy until schools open for the next term. He fluctuates between the peaceful memories of the past, and the harsh present, longing for his grandfather to take him away.

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Summer (China)

This summer is really tough for Xiao Guang. He longs to leave the city and return to the countryside. His father is too busy, so Xiao Guang stays with his step-mother Yuan Jie. Xiao Guang was really close to his grandfather. But recently when he called his grandfather, nobody answered. So Xiao Guang decides to go back to the countryside to find out why.

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Blogog (Philippines)

A seven-year boy gets more than he bargains for when he picks up a filthy yellow ball by the creek. It's a unique fable that follows a boy’s journey of discovery and examines a child’s inherent capacity to bounce back from life’s challenges and tribulations.

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Marbles with Thoreau (USA)

While exploring the woods near Walden Pond, two children stumble across a mysterious abandoned cabin. They quickly discover the cabin is in fact occupied by none other than the 19th century genius, Henry David Thoreau. What will the children discover as they cross the threshold into Thoreau's whimsical world?

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How far would you go to protect your family? Jack and Molly Campbell enjoyed an idyllic life with their adopted 6-year-old son, Joey. One phone call shatters their world when they learn Joey's biological father has just been released from prison, and discovered a loophole in the adoption papers. He now lays claim to his son and wants to start a new life by taking Joey back. When a judge upholds the biological father's claim, Molly and Jack decide to devise a plan to prevent Joey from being handed over to this brutal man. This film is based on the novel by best-selling author Karen Kingsbury.

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Scarecrow  (USA)

Jack Wren, a newly recruited Confederate soldier, is overwhelmed by the bloody realities of war and deserts. He encounters two runaway slaves in route to the North and freedom, and in time witnesses a different source of courage and discovers a battle worth fighting.

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It's 1987 and sixth grader, Cameron, wants desperately to make Talia his girlfriend. Three things stand in his way: Mitch Fallin, Jake Magnum and a mullet.

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Possibly.

I'm committed to some attending other events, but I would like to be able to fit that one in as well. It's been several years since I last attended.

Continuing on with the incredibly busy fall schedule...

At the New York Film Festival is the new Todd Solondz film, a kind of update to Happiness.....

Life During Wartime  (USA)

Todd Solondz starts his latest and finest film to date by introducing us to Joy (Shirley Henderson), whose husband Allen (Michael Kenneth Williams) is not quite cured of his peculiar “affliction.” Joy’s sister Trish (Allison Janey) is hoping to stabilize her family life by marrying the recently divorced Harvey (Michael Lerner), but her soon-to-be bar-mitzvahed son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) isn’t sure he wants another man in the house—especially as it seems his dead father, Bill (Ciarán Hinds) might not be dead after all. His portrait of these and several other major characters—beautifully rendered by Charlotte Rampling, Paul Rubens, Renee Taylor and Ally Sheedy—is tough, tender, at times startling but never mean or condescending. For Solondz “wartime” is not a historical period but a permanent condition: not only the constant battle between the sexes, but even more so the endless struggle between personal desires and the society set up to contain them.

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In Chicago there are four fests of interest coming up soon.

New from the Jewish fest,



Twelve-year-old (Yuval Shevach) Eli's world is turned upside down when his father Ben, the city architect of suburban Herzliya, is charged with taking bribes. Ben is taken into custody before his son's eyes, and the news makes its way to the school playground. Eli is convinced his father is innocent, and struggles to see his father released. Eli faces injustice, corruption and pretense among both adults and children. He has to shape and stick to his own principles. In the process, he rediscovers his father and tastes the bitter sting of first love.

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A comedy/drama told through the eyes and words of an 11-year-old boy. The charming Felix, is head of an Israeli family of four living in an inner-city Parisian suburb in the early 70s. As he gradually transforms into a small-time racketeer, he encounters the local godfather. Soon Felix is out of his league and wanted by the police. Although his wife attempts to shelter her children from their father's shame, the older son discovers the truth about the man he idolizes and attempts follow in his father's footsteps.

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Pinchas (Israel)

Pinchas & his mother are new immigrants from Russia His mother barely makes a living working night shifts, she devotes her spare time to the affair she has with a married man. On the third floor lives a religious family, Pinhas is drawn to the warmth and unity that characterize this family there he meets a girl his age, and her older brother, who slowly introduces him to religion.

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Quite overwhelming...

What an amazing year for boy movies.

London 2009



Tolly is sent to stay with his grandmother at Green Knowe, an old house which has been the subject of many mysteries over its long history. Initially, Tolly uncovers a number of these stories from talking to the long-serving staff, but is shocked when ghostly apparitions start visiting him, seemingly in order to help him piece together a number of clues that might, once and for all, solve the riddle of the missing jewels and the cause of the tragic fire that destoyed part of the house over a century before.

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Starring Alex Etel as Tolly

Forbidden Door   (Indonesia)

Joko Anwar's astounding new psycho-thriller works on more levels than you can count. The retro-styled credit sequence suggests the 1950s, which maybe explains some disorienting timewarp details in the present-day urban setting. Gambir is a fashionable sculptor who specialises in figures of pregnant women, but he's been impotent ever since his wife aborted their child before their wedding. Patronised by his mother, he finds himself haunted by plaintive cries for help, seemingly from a young boy. Behind the forbidden doors of a secretive members' club called Herosase (it's an anagram) he discovers a selection of CCTV channels, each a window on a horrifying reality; one channel shows a house in which a young boy suffers hideous abuse at the hands of his parents. Gambir determines to find the house and save the boy. But all is not as it seems… Anwar provides an orthodox ending, which patly explains the whole mystery – and then gives us the real ending, which changes everything. Like his The Secret (which also starred Fachri Albar), Forbidden Door evokes other filmmakers and genres while going its own unclassifiable way. There will, of course, be blood.

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Romka - 97 (Finland)

9-year old Romka and his best friend Dinka live in St Petersburg. Romka's father smuggles animals for a living. Romka gets paid for helping his father.

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