Spotlight
Wondering which films to watch? Spotlight presents thematically grouped, must see films, hand-picked by Fandor's curators.
Invisible Storyteller
Voice-over narration is is a compelling filmmaking technique. The narrator might be an omniscient voice, one who knows the thoughts and feelings of characters even before they do, or they might be one individual character’s inner monologue. Either way, the best voice-overs find a way to seamlessly become part of the movie’s world. A well-executed narration can reveal insights that bring us closer to the story, or leave us actively questioning the reliability of the characters. In this collection, Fandor highlights exceptional and varying movies that make use of this dynamic technique. Watch — and listen — carefully.
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Selected Films
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Low Down
LOW DOWN, based on Amy-Jo Albany's powerful memoir of growing up in the care of her gifted, tormented and frequently absent musician father, the bebop jazz pianist Joe Albany, focuses on the years 1974 to 1976, when Amy had few resources other than the love of her aging grandmother and a ragtag...Watch Movie
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Leonie
In the lush tradition of the glorious films of Merchant and Ivory, comes the true life story of Leonie Gilmour, whose life crossed continents, wars and cultures, embodied with courage and passion in search of art and freedom. As an independent young woman seeking to overcome the restrictive...Watch Movie
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Bettie Page Reveals All
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Mark Mori's BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL is an intimate look at one of the world's most recognized sex symbols, told in her own words for the first time. In Mori's alluring documentary, the real Bettie Page emerges from the veil of myth and rumor...Watch Movie
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Millennium Mambo
MILLENNIUM MAMBO is acclaimed Taiwan director Hou Hsiao Hsien's neon-saturated story about female entrapment and all-too-sudden blossoming in an urban setting populated by hedonistic, angst-ridden characters and scored by a throbbing techno thump. Starring the gorgeous Shu Qi.Watch Movie
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Blind
Ingrid, a woman contending with the loss of vision, is trying to navigate a world without sight. She spends her days attempting to reconstruct the visual world as she once knew it. As she struggles with her predicament, she begins writing salacious fictional stories that slowly morph into...Watch Movie
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Oldboy
Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is locked up in a strange, private prison for 15 years. No one will tell him why he's there and who his jailer is, but he is kept in reasonably comfortable quarters and has a TV to...Watch Movie
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River of Grass
Kelly Reichardt's darkly funny debut feature, RIVER OF GRASS brought the writer/director back to the setting of her adolescence, the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up with her detective father and narcotics agent mother. Shot on 16mm, the story follows the misadventures of...Watch Movie
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Lost Colony
Poetic, mysterious and visually elegant, Christopher Holmes' debut feature forges an impressionistic coming-of-age narrative as prismatic as the ever-changing strand of shoreline the story inhabits. With refreshing sincerity and an unassuming sense of humor, LOST COLONY considers the lives of...Watch Movie
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Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
GRAVITY WAS EVERYWHERE BACK THEN is the ballad of Leonard Wood, who built his house as a healing device to cure his wife. Filmmaker Brent Green has created many animated shorts but for his first feature-length film he built a full scale replica of Wood's house in the yard...Watch Movie
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20,000 Days on Earth
20,000 DAYS ON EARTH is an inventive, lyrical ode to creativity and an intimate examination of the artistic process of musician and cultural icon Nick Cave. In their debut feature directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard fuse drama and documentary, weaving a staged day in Cave's...Watch Movie
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The Guatemalan Handshake
One of the Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, writer-director Todd Rohal charts strange new cinematic waters with his madly innovative feature debut, THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE. Winner of Special Jury Prizes at Slamdance and Torino, Rohal's vivacious feast...Watch Movie
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An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
With arresting insight, vulnerability and a delightful sense of humor, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY utilizes a mix of live action and animation to capture the relationship between Terence (Nance) and a lovely young woman (Namik Minter) as it teeters on the divide...Watch Movie
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Blue
In his final and most daring cinematic statement, Derek Jarman the romantic meets Jarman the iconoclast in a lush soundscape pulsing against a purely blue screen. Laying bare his physical and spiritual state in a narration about his life, his struggle with AIDS and his encroaching blindness, BLUE...Watch Movie
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Heart of Glass
After the international successes of AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL (aka THE ENIGMA OF KASPER HAUSER), Werner Herzog baffled many admirers with this cryptic parable. An 18th century Bavarian mountain village is famous for its production of "ruby glass"...Watch Movie
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Nothing Bad Can Happen
Inspired by atrocious true events, NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN follows Tore, a young lost soul involved with an underground Christian punk movement who falls in with a dysfunctional family curious to test his seemingly unwavering faith. After a chance encounter helping Benno, a...Watch Movie
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Around the World
Orson Welles made his first of many forays into television in 1955 when he signed on to produce, direct and host a series of twenty-six travelogues for British television. Six were ultimately broadcast, taking viewers to Paris, London, Madrid, the Basque Country and Vienna...Watch Movie
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A Zed and Two Noughts
"Two legs look so good together, don't you think?" A masterpiece of modern cinema, A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS is Peter Greenaway's beautifully disturbing and darkly humorous take on obsession and death. In a horrific automobile-swan accident in front of the Rotterdam Zoo, two women...Watch Movie
