Icarus Films

Accompanied by her lover, Suzanna (Charlotte Gainsbourg), 40, views a Riviera beach house for her family's summer vacation. This day, this break in her routine, in this new house, will mark a turning point in her life. Based on the Marguerite Duras play of the same name, SUZANNA ANDLER is the portrait of a woman trapped in her marriage to a wealthy, unfaithful businessman in the 1960s. She must choose between her conventional destiny as a wife and...

The tragic postwar romance is a tale of class anxiety and classic Romantic fatalism, run through with a typically French frankness about sex and gender. Jean Gabin is the title character, an unpretentious and proudly working-class building contractor, who falls in love with a ravishing shopgirl Blanche, quite unaware that she comes trailing a notorious sexual history and attracts the determined ardor of every man she meets. Among her current lovers...

Evil comes in many forms. In Myanmar, it manifests in the casual racism and Islamophobia of influential, charismatic Burmese Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu. Through interviews with journalists and community leaders who protest against Wirathu's views, activist footage of Rohingya persecutions, and through powerful storytelling, director Barbet Schroeder slowly builds his case. Perhaps most damning of all are the interviews with the man himself; couching...

From 1967 to 1976 Chris Marker was a member of SLON (the "Company for the Launching of New Works"), which was based on the idea that cinema should not be thought of solely in terms of commerce. 1967 was also the year an important strike broke out at Rhodiaceta, a textile plant in Besançon, France. Chris Marker and members of SLON visited the city to document the strike and the lives and attitudes of the workers. The film's most important moments...

The decades-spanning tumultuous romance of a quintessentially French couple is chronicled in the thought-provoking and scathingly funny MR. & MRS. ADELMAN. Told in flashback from the early 1970s forward, this epic love-hate relationship begins as angst-ridden writer Victor meets Sarah, a brilliant doctoral student who falls head-over-heels. A complicated courtship and eventual marital discord ensue, as the egocentric Victor becomes a literary superstar...

The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which-- maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation-- leads the world economy to the abyss. This essayistic, political documentary follows container cargo aboard ships, barges, trains and trucks, listening to workers, engineers, planners, politicians, and those marginalized by the global transport system. We discover the...

Features three short films by Madeline Anderson.

Italian actor-director Gianni di Gregorio returns to filmmaking with NEVER TOO LATE FOR LOVE, a tender and lighthearted romantic comedy set against the backdrop of Italy's southern countryside. After being evicted from his long-time apartment in Rome, retired professor Astolfo returns to his childhood village in southern Italy, where a distinguished yet run-down estate has been passed down in his family for generations. Any plans for a quiet retirement...

Writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras (L₂Amant, India Song) explores the matrix of love, desire and language in her characteristically oblique and experimental style. The film's lovers are never allowed to meet in person, instead carrying out their conversations over the phone, using unlisted phone lines leftover from the German occupation of Paris. Elliptical sequences play out in empty streets, nocturnal cityscapes and shadowy interiors, linked...

Embedding herself in the village of Wukan, southern China for several years starting in 2011, first-time documentarian Jill Li witnessed an unprecedented experiment in local democracy. Corrupt officials had illegally sold villagers' land, but the villagers decided to fight back. The documentary is divided into two halves: the first, "Protests," depicts the grassroots activities of Wukan residents as they work to reverse the land sales and gain a substantial...