0732 – The White King (2016)

The White King is a 2016 British sci-fi-drama film written and directed by Alex Helfrecht and Jörg Tittel. It is an adaptation of the 2008 Hungarian novel of the same name written by György Dragomán and follows Djata (Lorenzo Allchurch) growing up in an agrarian totalitarian state, without access to the rest of the world, while dealing with persecution against him and his parents (Agyness Deyn & Ross Partridge) by the government. (wiki)

György Dragomán’s story has been transposed to fictitious near-future dictatorship. Dragomán said this about the film: “In my original novel I wanted to show freedom in a society where freedom should not exist. In their movie Alex and Jörg were brave enough to take my communist childhood tale and adapt it into a modern story, showing us that the threat to freedom is as eternal as our fight for it.”

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731 – Nova the Film (2011 documentary)

An inspiring 75 min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

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ROJO Magazine   NOVA festival

0730 – The Objective (2008)

timespace coordinates: 2001 Ghazni Province, Afghanistan

The Objective is a 2008 american-moroccan science fiction horror film directed by Daniel Myrick  starring Jonas Ball, Matthew R. Anderson, and Michael C. Williams. (wiki)

A team of U.S. Special Ops forces is dispatched to a remote mountain region of Afghanistan with the ostensible orders of locating an influential Muslim cleric. While on the mission they find themselves lost in a Middle Eastern “Bermuda Triangle” and faced with an enemy that none of them could have imagined. (rt)

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vimana // the vimana epics

0728 – HHhH / The Man with the Iron Heart (2017)

timespace coordinates: 1930 Germany – 1942  Prague

The Man with the Iron Heart (released as HHhH in France and Killing Heydrich in Canada) is an English-language French-Belgian biographical war drama-thriller film directed by Cédric Jimenez and written by David Farr, Audrey Diwan, and Jimenez. It is based on French writer Laurent Binet‘s novel HHhH, and focuses on Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during World War II. The film stars Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O’Connell, Jack Reynor, and Mia Wasikowska.  (wiki)

The original working title of this film, “HHhH”, is a war-time Gestapo acronym for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich (“Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”),

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“When I was a little girl, I would imagine that each of these trees was a sentry watching
over me as I passed by. I wish you could have seen it in those days. We had a party every weekend. There were vast buffets, flowers everywhere. There would be an orchestra
who would play all night. And when it was time to go to bed I would hide under the piano so my mother couldn’t find me. I wish you could have seen it in those times…”

0726 – The Book of Henry (2017)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s suburban town in the Hudson Valley

The Book of Henry is a 2017 American drama film directed by Colin Trevorrow and written by Gregg Hurwitz. The film stars Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Lee Pace, Maddie Ziegler, and Dean Norris. The story concerns a plan hatched by a young genius to save the girl next door from abuse.

“Violence isn’t the worst thing in the world. What is then? Apathy.”

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imdb   www.gravillisinc.com

0725 – Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One In (2008)

timespace coordinates:  western Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1981

Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a vampire child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s. Alfredson, unconcerned with the horror and vampire conventions, decided to tone down many elements of the novel and focus primarily on the relationship between the two main characters. Selecting the lead actors involved a year-long process with open castings held all over Sweden. In the end, the 11-year-olds Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were chosen for the leading roles. They were subsequently commended by both Alfredson and film reviewers for their performances.

(Spoilers) The novel presents Eli as an androgynous boy, castrated centuries before by a sadistic vampire nobleman. The film handles the issue of Eli’s gender more ambiguously: a brief scene in which Eli changes into a dress offers a glimpse of a suggestive scar but no explicit elaboration.  When Oskar asks Eli to become his girlfriend, Eli tries to tell Oskar “I’m not a girl”. An actress plays Eli’s character, but her voice was considered to be too high pitched, so it was dubbed by voice actress Elif Ceylan. According to an interview with the director, as the film was originally conceived, flashbacks explained this aspect in more detail, but these scenes were eventually cut. (wiki)

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Let Me In (2010 american version)

timespace coordinates: Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1983

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723

The Carmilla Movie (2017) – adapted from the 1872 gothic novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

wiki / imdb / rottentomatoes

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