Foreign Films on DVD

Fatih Akin, the critically-acclaimed director of HEAD-ON, weaves overlapping tales of friendship and sexuality into a powerful narrative of universal love. Six characters are drawn together by circumstances-an old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together. Akin's piercing sense of the human condition and contemporary world events charge these hyperlinked stories into a multi-cultural powder keg.

Studio: Strand Releasing Release Date: 04/06/2006

Mahmut a 40 year old independent photographer is a village boy made good at least professionally in the big city - istanbul in this case.. Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 03/22/2005 Run time: 105 minutes

A young working-class wife and mother unlocks a freedom within her heart that she never expected. Don't miss this critically-acclaimed, award-winning romance.

Winner of the prestigious Fipresci Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, CLIMATES is internationally acclaimed writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan s sublime follow-up to his Cannes multi-award winner DISTANT. Beautifully drawn and meticulously observed, the film vividly recalls the cinema of Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni with its poetic use of landscape and the incisive, exquisitely visual rendering of loneliness, loss and the often-elusive nature of happiness. During a sweltering summer vacation on the Aegean coast, the relationship between middle-aged professor Isa (played by Ceylan himself) and his younger, television producer girlfriend Bahar (the luminous Ebru Ceylan, Ceylan s real-life wife) brutally implodes. Back in Istanbul that fall, Isa rekindles a torrid affair with a previous lover. But when he learns that Bahar has left the city for a job in the snowy East, he follows her there to win her back. Boasting subtly powerful performances, heart-stoppingly stunning cinematography (Ceylan s first work in high definition) and densely textured sound design, CLIMATES is the Turkish filmmaker s most gorgeous rumination yet on the fragility and complexity of human relationships.<br><br><br>SPECIAL FEATURES<br> Stunning new anamorphic transfer, created from hi-def elements The Making of Climates Climates at Cannes Interview: Director/actor Nuri Bilge Ceylan and actor Ebru Ceylan U.S. Theatrical Trailer Optional English subtitles<br><br><br>2006 97 minutes Turkey Color In Turkish with optional English subtitles 1.95:1 theatrical aspect ratio Not Rated

Winner of the Best Film and FIPRESCI prizes at the Istanbul International Film Festival, Reha Erdem s Times and Winds is a film bewitched by the rhythms of everyday life (The Village Voice) that packs a poetic-spiritual punch way beyond its placid surface (Variety). Laying bare forbidden yearnings, dawning sexuality, and oedipal rage, it tells the story of three pre-adolescent friends coming of age in a remote Turkish mountain village. Young teen Omer (Özkan Özen) contemplates the unthinkable as he bitterly struggles under the loveless emotional yoke of his scornful Muslim cleric father. Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali), Omer s best friend, obsesses over a beautiful schoolteacher. Yildiz (Elit Iscan) recoils from burgeoning womanhood, and from the sordid carnal realities she has grown too old to ignore. Blessed with painterly wide-screen visuals, Estonian composer Arvo Part s sublime music score, and phenomenally surefooted performances from an astonishingly adept young cast, Times and Winds contrasts a parochial society s unending chain of cruelty with the pagan natural world s eternal and sensual beauty. Wise in its depiction of the cycle of life, and unblinking in its exploration of fate s capricious malice and childhood s discontent, Times and Winds vision of people in thrall to religious ritual and living at the mercy of nature may be poetic, but it is no idyll (The New York Times).

Studio: Strand Releasing Release Date: 04/06/2006

Muharrem (Erkan Can) lives a solitary existence, strictly adhering to the most severe Islamic doctrines. To his surprise, a religious leader hires him as a rent collector, where he is given Western-style suits, a cell phone and a car with a driver. Thrown suddenly into the modern world, the naïve Muharrem is exposed to temptations and hypocrisies, causing his fear of God to eat away at his senses, and threaten his sanity.

DVD EXTRAS: Interview with director Özer Kiziltan, Original Theatrical Trailer