December's Top 30 Films
Check out the top 30 films most watched and well-liked on OVID last month!
-
The Temple Woods Gang
Directed by Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche • Drama • With Régis Laroche, Philippe Petit, Marie Loustalot • 113 minutes
A gang of small-time criminals in a working-class French suburb stage a daring heist against a mysterious Saudi Prince.
“One of the most fascinating and consistently surprising auteurs t...
-
Who By Fire
Movie
A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage. Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux ...
-
California Solo (w/ Robert Carlyle)
Directed by Marshall Lewy • Drama • With Robert Carlyle • 2012 • 93 minutes
Lachlan MacAldonich is former Britpop rocker who has settled into a comfortably numb existence in farm country just outside Los Angeles. By day, he works on an organic farm and travels regularly to the city’s farmers’ ma...
-
Niki
Movie
The debut feature of actor-turned-director Céline Sallette, Niki is a vibrant portrait of French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (Charlotte Le Bon, star of The White Lotus), one of the most iconoclastic figures of the contemporary art world.
Fleeing the oppressive atmosphere of post-war Ame...
-
Pastorale 1943
Directed by Wim Verstappen • Drama • With Pim de la Parra, Rutger Hauer • 1978 • 128 minutes
Submitted for the 1978 Academy Awards -- Best Foreign Film, Wim Verstappen's Pastorale 1943 is a war drama centered on the Dutch resistance during World War II, starring Derek de Lint, Sylvia Kristel, Ru...
-
Christmas, Again
Directed by Charles Poekel • Drama • With Kentucker Audley, Hannah Gross • 2015 • 80 minutes
For a fifth consecutive December, a heartbroken Noel returns to New York City to work the night shift at a sidewalk Christmas tree lot. Devoid of any holiday spirit, he struggles to stay awake during the...
-
Sherman's March (Ross McElwee)
Directed by Ross McElwee • Documentary • 1986 • 155 minutes
When First Run released Ross McElwee's Sundance Award winning Sherman's March in 1986, it went on to become one of the largest grossing documentaries ever. Audiences and critics alike fell in love with McElwee's "quirky, funny and fasci...
-
Leila and the Wolves
Directed by Heiny Srour • Documentary • With Nabila Zeitouni, Rafik Ali Ahmad • 94 minutes
Drawing on the Arab heritage of the ‘Arabian Nights’, Leila and the Wolves combines fictional drama, archival footage, fantasy sequences, mosaic pattern, to refute the colonial and male dominated version o...
-
The Time It Takes
Movie
In this deeply personal film about her relationship with her legendary filmmaker father, Francesca Comencini’s virtuosic work of cinematic autobiography paints a richly emotional picture of their changing bond during the Years of Lead. Nominated for six Donatello Awards.
“The Time it Takes is a ...
-
The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived
Directed by Heiny Srour • Documentary • 68 minutes
In the late 60s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, Leninist guerrilla movement. Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, t...
-
Good Manners
Directed by Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra • Drama • With Sabél Zuaa, Marjorie Estiano, Miguel Lobo • 2017 • 135 minutes
Filmmakers Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s second collaboration (after the acclaimed Hard Labor) deftly integrates art-house and genre cinema to create a thrilling and dark gothi...
-
Burning Night
Directed by Eryk Rocha • Drama • With Fabricio Boliveira, Bárbara Colen, Cadu N. Jay • 2019 • 98 minutes
Paulo starts driving a cab to pay for his bills and for his son’s child support. Passenger’s stories intertwine with his own while he drives at night through Rio de Janeiro - a chaotic city ...
-
Woo Who? May Wilson
Directed by Amalie R. Rothschild • Documentary • With May Wilson, Meredith Monk • 1969 • 34 minutes
When her husband informs her, after 40 years of marriage, that his future plans no longer include her, May Wilson, age 60, former "wife-mother-housekeeper-cook" and a grandmother, moves to New Yor...
-
The Pavilion on the Water
Directed by Stefano Croci, Silvia Siberini • Documentary • 2023 • 77 minutes
The documentary feature film The Pavilion On The Water is a cinematic journey into the world of Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa and his passion for Japanese culture. Japan, to him, was an inspirational universe but also...
-
A Witch Story
Directed by Yolanda Pividal Garcia • Documentary • 2022 • 73 minutes
Young writer Alice was a teenager when she discovered something that changed her life forever: she was a descendant of Martha Allen Carrier, a woman hanged for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. At 24, after scou...
-
Watchtower
Directed by Pelin Esmer • Drama • With Olgun Simsek, Nilay Erdönmez • 2012 • 96 minutes
A man and a woman seeking refuge from the world: Nihat at a remote forest fire tower, Seher in her room at a rural bus station. When their lives collide, each now has to fight their battle of conscience befor...
-
Gwen and the Book Of Sand
Movie
A teenage girl and her 173-year-old companion take an epic journey in French director Jean-François Laguionie's hauntingly poetic animated classic. A sublime masterpiece of world animation, GWEN is on par with René Laloux's FANTASTIC PLANET and Miyazaki's NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND as a v...
-
Hotel Terminus: The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls)
5 items
Directed by Marcel Ophüls • Documentary • With Klaus Barbie, Claude Lanzmann, Marcel Ophüls • 1988 • 267 minutes
A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE weaves t...
-
Creating Paradise
Documentary • 2023 • 67 minutes
'The ultimate goal of an architect is to create a paradise', Alvar Aalto said.
After a trip to Finland in 1960, Spanish architect Vicente Saavedra (1937-2021) plans the construction of TenBel, a touristic area in the Canary Islands where he applied some of Aalto'...
-
Downeast
Directed by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon • Documentary • 2012 • 81 minutes
Downeast is an experiential story that unfolds over the course of a year-and-a-half in the small lobster village of Prospect Harbor, Maine. It observes the closing of the last remaining Sardine Cannery in the United Stat...
-
Sarkozy-Gaddafi: The Scandal of All Scandals
Movie
It’s a scandal that has all the trappings of a Hollywood thriller. A secret meeting by the Eiffel Tower. Millions of euros crossing borders in suitcases. Cash payments to key people close to politicians. A former member of a terrorist regime whisked from his jail cell in another country. A presid...
-
Timestamp
Movie
Keeping schools open in Ukraine is an attempt to recreate at least some of the normal life they had before the war — until February 24, 2022 (and in some regions even earlier, in 2014). Without interviews, narration and reenactments, TIMESTAMP provides an insight into how the war is affecting the...
-
Mardi Gras: Made in China
Directed by David Redmon • Documentary • 2005 • 72 minutes
Winner of twenty-one national and international awards, Mardi Gras: Made in China follows the path of Mardi Gras beads from the streets of New Orleans during Carnival – where revelers party and exchange beads for nudity – to the discipli...
-
Aberdeen
Directed by Hans Petter Moland • Drama • With Lena Headey, Charlotte Rampling, Stellan Skarsgard • 2000 • 103 minutes
Kaisa (Lena Headey), a beautiful and feisty Scottish woman, finally has her life together...at least until her mother (Charlotte Rampling) asks an enormous favor: to bring back t...