the blue banana

This Argentinian crime drama in Spanish has all the ingredients that you would want for a family movie night - an unsolved crime , an unsaid love and  a tumultuous phase in Argentinian politics - the final legs of the dictatorship of Isabel Peron.                                             Benjamin Esposito is a judiciary employee who is investigating the rape and murder of  Lilliano Colloto. He is helped by his alcoholic partner ,Pablo Sandoval ,and his new department chief ,Irene Menendez. Though all the leads point to a thug Isidore Gomez and though Esposito manages to get Gomez behind bars , he is released because of his political connections - being part of a right wing death squad that has the blessings of the ruling junta.The murder is foisted on two immigrant workers whose confessions are extracted under torture and the case is closed Lilliano`s husband R...

The African doctor is an inspiring story of the life of Seyolo Zantoko and his family who move from Zaire to France in 1975. Seyolo is the only African to graduate from medical school in Lille,France in 1975.He turns down an offer to be the personal physician of the Zairean president on ethical grounds and ,instead, takes up an offer from the Mayor of Marly -Gomont, a small village in Northern France, to serve as a doctor there. The Zantoko family -Seyolo ,his wife Anne and their two kids Sivi & Kamini, move to Marly-Gomont and how they overcome prejudices to finally become accepted, forms the rest of the story.  The villagers do not patronize Seyolo's practice, because he is black ,and he is forced to work as a farm hand to feed the family.Meanwhile ,his wife Anne keeps pressuring to move to Brussels,where her relatives live. Added to this,Lavigne, the contender for the Mayoral post wants Seyolo out. In the run up to the Mayoral election, Anne leaves for Brussels a...

  In Melilla, a Spanish enclave surrounded by Morocco , hundreds of African refugees try to climb a barbed wire to enter "Europe". Mateo, a Spanish guard witnesses his colleague Javi strike down one of them who falls down dead, . Meanwhile , in distant Cameroon, the killing of an elephant reserve`s star elephant by poachers is inadvertently witnessed by seven year old Adu and his elder sister Alika.The forest guards along with their Spanish external advisor Gonzalo , arrive too late to find the elephant`s carcass and Adu`s abandoned bicycle. How the seemingly unconnected stories of Adu , Gonzalo and Mateo intersect forms the plot of the movie - Adu. Adu and his sister Alika , having lost their mother to the vengeful poachers , decide to undertake an arduous journey to Spain to join their father. They travel from Cameroon to Senegal , where their aunt pays a human trafficker to put them on a flight to Spain. They are cheated by the trafficker and asked to travel as stowaways i...

  Somewhere in the Balkans around 1995 , a group of Aid workers seek high and low to get a rope to haul out a corpse that has been deliberately flung into a well. This forms the skeleton for  the story of A Perfect Day .While this is strictly not a foreign language film , it is the English movie debut of Spanish director , Fernando de Leon de Aronoa .                                                          While the plot sounds quite simple , it slowly meanders into various sub plots that eventually connect back to the main plot. Mambru , the protagonist , is an NGO aid worker working in a conflict zone in the Balkans. His team comprises of B - a wild middling character , Sophie - a fresher and a local interpreter Damir. They are soon joined by Katya , an assessment expert who is an ex flame of Mambru`s and Nikola , young teenag...

 A gripping crime thriller that doesn't lag and manages to maintain its pace throughout - that's "The Invisible Guest" or   " Contratiempo" , as it was originally named in Spanish , for you. The story and screenplay are quite slick,enough to inspire  remakes in Italian , Hindi and Telugu.The film comes highly recommended with a 8.1 /10 rating on IMDb. Adrian Doria , a successful businessman , is out on bail for the murder of his lover Laura in a rural hotel  Adrian`s lawyer Felix  hires a very prestigious defense attorney, Virginia Goodman ,  to fight his case. Virginia turns up at Adrian`s door one morning and informs him that the prosecutor has found a witness who will testify soon , and so Adrian has to tell his story completely and quickly.Thus , the story begins. First ...why was Adrian framed for the murder of Laura. According to Adrian , he and his lover Laura had been blackmailed into coming to the hotel with  100,000 Euros. But he is knoc...

Sometimes it is quite overwhelming when you realize how one isolated  incident could  kick start a chain of events that would eventually engulf the whole world in a diabolical embrace.When Gavrilo Princip , a Bosnian Serb ,fired upon  Archduke Franz Ferdinand , the heir presumptive of the vast Austro Hungarian empire on the 28th of June 1914 ,little did he know that he would be responsible for the greatest war on Earth - the World War I. The movie ,which is in German , begins with the first attempt on the life of the  Archduke - a botched bomb attack on the imperial convoy.Leo Pfeffer , a Hungarian Jew by ethnicity , is put in charge of the investigation. While  interrogating the bomb attack suspect , news arrives that the Archduke has been assassinated in a second attack - by the bullet from Princip`s gun. When Pfeffer starts his investigation.,there are many loose ends that don`t fit - the convoy proceeding in spite of the attack , the driver of the first car ...