Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan Stray is a documentary made in Istanbul about three dogs who roam the streets and who eventually are taken care of by young Syrian refugee boys. The film is made by the award winning short film documentarian Elizabeth Lo from Hong Kong. She went to Tisch in NYC and received an MFA from Stanford This is her debut feature. Stray is a metaphor that not only fits the dogs but their caretakers as they all live in the streets scrimping for food and shelter. The areas where the dogs roam and the boys live are run down places such as abandoned apartment buildings, streets, beaches, open fields and shops. The film is made with a mobile camera and there are a lot of tracking shots of the dogs angled low to the ground for their heights, It is not a scripted film and there are non-actors so it seems, making it a compelling neorealist film. People in the streets are aware they are being filmed but don’t seem to mind or even to notice or care. The shots of Istanbul are not pret

By Moira Sullivan The French drama Deux or Two of Us in English features two exceptional and world class veteran actresses, Barbara Sukowa as Nina and Martine Chevallier as Madeleine in a story about a long term relationship that they keep hidden from friends and family. Directed and written by FILIPPO MENEGHETTI they are next door neighbors but they have been together for over 20 years. At Madeline’s birthday party, Nina is conspicuously absent but at that dinner Madeline is going to tell her daughter Anne LÉA DRUCKER , her son and grandson that she is going to sell her apartment and move to Italy with Nina. Madeline is a widower and her son is upset that she didn’t love him and moved on so quickly. But she was in love with another woman who was the love of her life. As she starts to speak at the birthday party she becomes inhibited for after two decades of silence it is hard to form words. She had promised Nina she would tell her family a