Realism
see all genres ›Character development and emotional themes are key to the dramatic film. Though generally serious, dramas range widely in tone and scale. Intimate relationships and social issues are perennial subjects.
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Genres / Drama / Realism
SUB-GENRES · Pseudodocumentary · Docudrama · Social Realism · Neo-realism · Magic Realism · Pseudorealism
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A Film Unfinished
At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw...Watch Movie
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Wendy and Lucy
Named to over sixty "Best of 2008" lists (and even many "Best of the Decade" lists), WENDY AND LUCY solidified filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's reputation for films that are (according to the New York Times) "a touchstone of the new realism in American cinema." Drifting upwards to Alaska like a 21st...Watch Movie
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Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog's most epically-scaled film was inspired by an actual historical incident of stranger-than-fiction curiosity. In the late 1800s Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald had an entire steamship laboriously transported over a mountain in order to open a trade passage from rubber-rich...Watch Movie
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On the Bowery
ON THE BOWERY chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York's skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened it 1956, it exploded on the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting the post-war American independent...Watch Movie
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Mock Up on Mu
Notorious Bay Area kino-renegade Craig Baldwin tops his earlier found-footage operas SPECTRES OF THE SPECTRUM and SONIC OUTLAWS with the rapid-fire pulp serial-cum-political-tract piss-take on California's major industrial complexes: military, entertainment and religious. Hitting upon everything...Watch Movie
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Elles
Director Ma_gorzata Szumowska's ELLES paints an unromantic picture of upper-crust domesticity. ELLES stars the fearless Juliette Binoche (CHOCOLAT) as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes (Joanna Kulig and AnaпїЅs Demoustier) for a magazine...Watch Movie
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In the City of Sylvia
A young artist searches the winding streets of Strasbourg for an old love in Jose Luis Guerin's acclaimed and exceedingly beautiful IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA. During a languid summer, a young man spends his afternoons sketching in an outdoor café. He is looking for a woman he met...Watch Movie
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Accattone
The first of Pier Paolo Pasolini's highly acclaimed films and the winner of numerous film festival prizes, ACCATTONE uses a talented cast to present a vivid picture of the Roman slums. Based on one of the filmmaker/poet's novels, this story of a pimp, his friends, his enemies and his girls is...Watch Movie
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Scherezade
Adapting the story-within-a-story framework of ARABIAN NIGHTS to modern times, SHEHERAZADE TELL ME A STORY is a brilliantly honest unveiling of the position of women in Egyptian society today. Hugely controversial in its native Egypt for its risky portrait of female sexual desire and repression,...Watch Movie
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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating...Watch Movie
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Neighboring Sounds
One of the most acclaimed films of the year, NEIGHBORING SOUNDS is the thrilling debut from filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. On a quiet block in the coastal city of Recife, ruled by an aging patriarch and his sons, a recent spate of petty crime has rattled the nerves of the...Watch Movie
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What About Me
WHAT ABOUT ME portrays the gradual deterioration of Lisa Napolitano (Rachel Amodeo), a young woman forced to exist on the streets, intermingling with the outcasts of society. Along the way she encounters a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran, Nick (Richard Edson), a nihilistic East Villager, Tom (Nick...Watch Movie
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The Cry of Jazz
Filmed in Chicago and finished in 1959, THE CRY OF JAZZ is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race: a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it...Watch Movie
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Craft
Bianca manages a precarious living as a talented but underemployed actress in Rio de Janeiro, performing for private events dressed as female movie icons. Troubled by the thought she has missed her chance at a “big break,” she perseveres with single-minded dedication to her craft until an...Watch Movie
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Man of the Crowd
Juvenal is a train conductor for the metro in Belo Horizonte. Margo controls train traffic. Both live in a state of deep solitude – each in their own way. This film is a reflection on different forms of loneliness and friendship in an overcrowded Brazilian urban environment.Watch Movie
