Jackie works as a CCTV operator. Each day she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again, a man she never wanted to see again. Now she has no choice, she is compelled to confront him.
Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her ex-boyfriend drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. ... See full summary »
A country schoolteacher reaching retirement comes to Wuhan in search of his only son. His dying wife has requested to see her boy one last time. He is met by his daughter Yanhong who works ... See full summary »
From the get-go, Arnold was fascinated by the careless, seemingly simple choices people make in their day-to-day lives that lead to unintended, complicated consequences.
In Morocco, an old dyer and his young son Miloud work transporting wool packs. So begins this story in the hands of thousands of old men, women and children involved in meticulous weaving carpets.
Albert Durant, a young millionaire, poses as a waiter in order to woo an exiled Grand Duchess, who does not object since she knows who he is and he doesn't know she knows. And his money ... See full summary »
Director:
Malcolm St. Clair
Stars:
Adolphe Menjou,
Florence Vidor,
Lawrence Grant
A teenage girl gets ready to go out to meet her boyfriend, despite her mother's loud verbal disapproval of her clothes. She goes out to a deserted area with him and he begins to touch her ... See full summary »
A poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family where he develops an intense relationship with his young foster sister, Cathy.
Director:
Andrea Arnold
Stars:
Kaya Scodelario,
James Howson,
Solomon Glave
A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
Tongpan is a 1977 Thai 16 mm black-and-white docudrama that re-creates a seminar that took place in Northeast Thailand in 1975 to discuss the proposed Pa-Mong Dam on the Mekong. Interwoven ... See full summary »
Director:
Euthana Mukdasanit
Stars:
Peter Bell,
Surachai Chantimatorn,
Ong-art Ponethon
The chief of an African village, who is called 'Demi Dieu' because after God he is the owner of all the things, already has five wives. But as this is not enough he decides to find himself ... See full summary »
Director:
Henri Duparc
Stars:
Bamba Bakari,
Tcheley Hanny,
Naky Sy Savane
Whilst working as a CCTV operator in Glasgow's working-class Red Road estate, Jackie sees a face from the past, a face that she thought would no longer haunt her dreams. Keeping her distance, and with the use of her CCTV cameras, she follows the face and the man and she finally decides to confront him. It is here that past lives are once again entwined and reconciliations are aired.Written by
Cinema_Fan
Red Road is the first of three films made at the behest of The Advance Party, a Danish project inspired by Lars von Trier, who challenged Arnold and two other new directors to create films with the same group of characters. See more »
Goofs
The video screens in the surveillance centre do not show the date and time, which would severely limit their usefulness as filmed evidence in real life. The date and time have clearly been disabled to avoid continuity errors in filming. The 'shadow' of the numbers is however visible. See more »
Quotes
Clyde:
[seeing Jackie for the first time]
Have we met?
Jackie:
Yeah, I saw you at a cafe.
Clyde:
Right. At a cafe.
[Clyde takes Jackie's hand and they both start to dance]
See more »
The setup is simple. We are voyeurs watching a woman whose job it is to watch surveillance cameras. She gets engaged with a specific subject, leaving the camera and entering the reality. We do as well, but the reason she does so is held in tension as a mystery. She clearly is repulsed while simultaneously attracted, but things take a very long time. By the end, you learn why.
But for nearly two hours, because you are folded into this, you suffer the incredible loss this woman has. She knows what that loss is, but you do not, which makes it ever the more effective. Because you can fill it in with the loss you know, and you can fall as deeply as you ever have.
It is a profound construction. Disturbing. Cinematic. Visual, Folded.
I study redheads in film, and what they stand for. In Hollywood, the dynamic is different than in the UK. There, an overt racism overlays the thing: redheads are from Ireland, and the Irish are at the bottom of the social scale. "Gingers" are considered rare and alluring in the US, while in England there is a vile connotation.
The guy here, the fellow we fear because he is so low class in this tattered landscape, he is a ginger. The road factors into the plot in a few different ways. Red does as well.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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The setup is simple. We are voyeurs watching a woman whose job it is to watch surveillance cameras. She gets engaged with a specific subject, leaving the camera and entering the reality. We do as well, but the reason she does so is held in tension as a mystery. She clearly is repulsed while simultaneously attracted, but things take a very long time. By the end, you learn why.
But for nearly two hours, because you are folded into this, you suffer the incredible loss this woman has. She knows what that loss is, but you do not, which makes it ever the more effective. Because you can fill it in with the loss you know, and you can fall as deeply as you ever have.
It is a profound construction. Disturbing. Cinematic. Visual, Folded.
I study redheads in film, and what they stand for. In Hollywood, the dynamic is different than in the UK. There, an overt racism overlays the thing: redheads are from Ireland, and the Irish are at the bottom of the social scale. "Gingers" are considered rare and alluring in the US, while in England there is a vile connotation.
The guy here, the fellow we fear because he is so low class in this tattered landscape, he is a ginger. The road factors into the plot in a few different ways. Red does as well.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.