In Jane Austen's times the fate of a woman was pretty direct: either to get married to a man with a suitable income or "enjoy" the pleasures of spinsterhood, being a burden for parents. Nowadays options are pretty infinite. You can be a business mogul, a wife, and a mother, a lover, or someone who finally discovered their true desires and has the guts to turn passion into a reality. It's also a great time to question choices made, relationships entered into, and despite the age and life stage, start something new. And which women to admire when it comes to sexual liberation and self-fulfillment? French Women. Enjoy.
You can be besotted by many things: by a woman, who charms your worn heart and clicks all the right buttons, by music or a voice, which drive you to happiness, tears or madness. You can also become besotted with a story, which we all have done at some point in our lives. But being subjected to the fantasy that comprises generations of fans, doesn't mean that we are content with the superficial and don't want to meet the creator. What triggers a young mind to enter the world of legends and languages? How important is a passion as opposed to education, hard work, and money making in order to gain material possessions? Why genuine friendship doesn't care about status and background? Can you still love one person throughout a lifetime and why the answer to the most complicated stories is surprisingly simple? A play on biography and one more step towards getting to know one of the most influential writers of his and a few more generations. Tolkien.
It's fun to have all sorts of heroes. Heroes with whom we can identify, heroes whom we admire and aspire to become, and heroes with whom in these uncertain times we can feel secure. But heroism has different sides. Sometimes having super extra powers doesn't mean that you are ultimately on the side of good. Sometimes it is a matter of choices. What if your father was the epitome of evil? Should you obey your adoptive parent despite a strong desire for independence? Can you, while being a middle-aged monster slightly insecure in appearance and relationship-messed to an entirely different level, enter the path towards settling down and self-acceptance? Or identity crisis is experienced by everybody, including the once found, abandoned by fate, fiery, and funny Hellboy? 2004, 2008, and 2019 films based on Mike Migola's comic book character prove that there is always some desire for evil. Enjoy.
You know these female friendships, they can last for years. They are full of support, understanding, parties danced to, evenings drown in glasses of wine, sobs over broken-hearts and loads of laughter. But friendships easily border on relationships, and every love can just as easily turn into hatred. What if years-long fondness and passion are a trigger for lobbying injust political decisions? Is it possible to escape from toxic manipulation and decades of caliper-like dependence? How much can you win when you establish the right relations, know who to talk to and how to use the right moment for your own benefit? And is every best friend forever or can you be easily replaced by a better version and lose once cherished life of privilege? The Favourite.
In the man-dominated world, we appreciate the story of the success of those who spread their wings and won a sense of independence. Among the few company owners who boast to be of beautiful sex, there was one woman who changed the fashion and perception of women for years. But is creating a fashion empire devoid of pain and heartbreak? What hides behind the cover of success and is this success a hard path to follow? Is it better to be in a loveless marriage with all privileges or feel loved without any recognition at all? What stands behind every woman's decision and is there a chance for no regrets? A woman's road to financial independence and success. Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel.
The greatest decisions in our lives are made when we lose all sense of security. When the monsters that we are so deeply afraid of come into fruition from gossips overheard and other people's calamities, and happen to us, we lose balance and hope. We can give up, swimming in the pool of misery. But occasionally, having nothing else to keep us is in the cage of blissful idleness, we are ready to spread our wings and start anew.
Is being fired from a seemingly profitable job that made you run for years the end of the world? Is discovering that your long-lasting marriage is an ultimate fail and a lie the worst tragedy that could happen to a mature woman with a grown-up kid? Should we devote our lives to people and institutions who don't seem to devote themselves to us? Is it ever too late for love, friendship, passion, and education? When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It can be the greatest drink of your life, indeed. Larry Crowne and Life of the Party, two perspectives on how to back to square one.
Reminding ourselves one of Michael Jackson's songs, be careful who you love, because the ones we fall for rarely fill our dreamy expectations. Some of them manage to surpass them in the most extravagant and unexpected ways. Some of them, from the scenario of bliss and family peace, turn our lives into a never-ending nightmare. You never entirely know a human being, whether you have lived with this person for years; whether it is your child, parent, or partner. But would you suspect someone you love of the worst crimes? Would you believe the whole world when it knows it all against your better judgment? What if the object of your affection turned out to be the worst murderer of his generation? Based on facts, an entertaining outlook on Ted Bundy's trial and one hell of a broken heart, proving that bad luck in love can have disastrous consequences. Enjoy.
There are phenomena of the contemporary world that seem stronger than religion. They connect despite the continent, age, and race. They unite, making people with no similarities, the part of a bigger whole. Maybe as a child you became besotted with the concept of a superhero, possibly you have been driven to the formula of a good science fiction movie. It could be so that, discouraged by the fantasy (childlike in your opinion), you had to appreciate the human nature and the complexity of the plot, following like a naive and helpless youngster someone bigger and stronger, but equally hurt and fragile as you. Maybe in time, you fell in love with the story so hard that it helped to make your personality what it was supposed to be, it witnessed your growth and maturation. Maybe, like so many stories, it helped you forget when life troubles made it impossible to relieve the pain.
It's impossible to ignore the impact of so many movies, so many characters, so many acts, adventures, and history in the background. It's our history and our heroes and our world. There are phenomena which make grown men cry and behave like little boys, there are stories which have and will connect generations, help marriages survive, children dream, and us believe in the power of justice, love, friendship, and humanity. This is such a phenomenon. Unbelievably powerful, Marvel's Miracle: Avengers.
Some great stories are based on facts, others occupy our minds to the extent of making us believe, trust and fall in love with the characters. At times novels and films are our greatest inspiration and a trigger that makes us act and change our ways. Some books have the power to influence and turn our mindset upside down. But there are also stories which dwell on condemnable acts such as murder. If they are dangerously close to reality you tend to be suspicious. Is the talent for writing a cover for another sort of fascination? How to tell whether a book is actually a testimony of a real crime? Based on a real event and real murder which was turned into fiction. Amok.
It's one thing when all your life you have been a supporter of LGBT rights, having pinned rainbows on the parts of your outfits, surviving countless parent conversations advocating for the right to love or sobbing watching Ellen DeGeneres' biography. But when your life is a perfect standard conservative scenario, your focus is entirely on heterosexual procreation and all of a sudden you fall in love with a woman, you might be surprised. To make matters worse, it's a rollercoaster for your sense of security, when you fall for someone who looks like a potential surrogate mother of your child. A fight with stereotypes, a love story by a woman, for women, and about women. Life is unpredictable and sometimes it gives you oranges. Nina.
For decades we have been watching the prettiest girl falling in love with the most handsome man. We have been spoilt by the story of Cinderella, we blindly believed that Prince is the best possible option, we got enchanted by the promise of eternal love and a happy ending. And then, we were left distraught when this handsome, intelligent, popular man turned out to be an idiot and we were left with another of his illegitimate child, another loan to pay, and another self-esteem to build from the ashes of a failed relationship. We invested in the glitter and missed the gold. How to get rid of the fairy tale and appreciate the reality? How to write your own happy ending and, instead of a fairy godmother, be the master of your own fate? Isn't It Romantic. Enjoy.
There are some love stories that shaped your life irreversibly. They caused heartache, the change of plans, they caused pain. You know this feeling, you fell in love with the wrong person, the wife of another man, the object of adoration of someone rich and powerful. In such cases, it's difficult to expect a happy ending. But once crashed with the burden of events, can you come to terms with the past? Can you forget the biggest loves of your life: a woman, a film, a vision, beauty, and happiness? Can you deal with the fact that your everything is also everything for someone else? Los abrazos rotos.
You'd think that every experience teaches you a lesson. You draw conclusions from past mistakes and at all cost avoid the sequence of events that led to this or that scenario. However, truth be told, people don't change in time. They just age, having their habits sharpened and preferences strengthened. The same goes with relationships: there are people who cheat and those who are cheated, there are marathon runners with happy anniversaries and those for whom the shortest jog in a couple seems to be too much of an effort. But can you, taking into account the attention it raises and the number of hearts it leaves broken, continually run from your own wedding? The 90s romantic comedy, which still makes us look at our own relationship flops and hope for some happy endings. Runaway Bride.
There is some truth in every legend and every story ever told. Inspiration doesn't pop up just like that but is triggered by something observed, noticed among events, gestures, and emotions. By being beaten by an animal you can contract various diseases, rabes included, which we have feared and experienced from time immemorial. But can you, due to one bite, contract an entirely different state of being? Who is responsible for the deaths of innocent people around you? Can you trust your closest friends and relatives? Can a mental disease be the basis of something else, possibly a memory which you wanted to get rid of and push to the box of long-forgotten? Can you, finally, put faith in yourself, especially when you notice the first symptoms? Can you stay away from The Wolfman? Enjoy.
None of us is immune to the power of imagination. We all fell for stories: those told by our parents when we fell asleep, those told by our teachers which inspired us, those stories of success that made us finish this or that course and choose life vocation. We are puppets in someone's plot, a part of the bigger whole. Stories also help us, make us believe in a better future, better times, and better political systems. They restore our belief in humanity and faith that good will ultimately defeat the evil. They help overcome traumas. Sometimes the gift of imagination makes daily life bearable and allows to pick up the pieces. An extraordinary and real story of survival and psychological struggle, and a gift of a story-telling closed in beautiful-girls-filled, Nazi-occupied and reality-inspired little imaginary Belgian town. Welcome to Marwen.
Sometimes you are so focused on the problems that you forget about a bigger world. There are issues impossible to overcome for many of us but only yours seem so complex and depressing. Don't you appreciate what you have only by seeing that some don't have even half of your possessions? Don't you feel weirdly ashamed that you're fed and have a roof over your head when seeing homeless and hungry? Don't these shifts of attention put your life into perspective and make you learn your lessons?
What if the biggest hypochondriac met a girl who was about to die? Will coming up with a bucket list teach him how to catch the day and live life to the fullest? Can we by accident find our life's best friend and change our outlook on life? A lesson on how to appreciate what is around and make dreams a reality, as nothing is impossible. An art of saying goodbye, humbly taking what's before us and letting go. Then Came You.
The order of things is simple, we are born, occasionally to give birth to others. This order, however, doesn't respect individual cases, the gaps of maturity, the relationships we are in or out and giggles of fate. It might happen that your own mother is as immature as a spoilt teenager and requires your constant attention. It could be that this reckless parent gets pregnant just as soon as you start to grow your own family. In times when the age of the pregnancy is not really certain, exposing us to teenage mums and late mothers, it's fun to see two generations striving for the same: parenthood. For mothers and daughters, to appreciate the fleeting moments when we can still be together and share experiences. Enjoy.
Open the photo album with old pictures from your childhood. Look at your chocolate-smeared face, your awkward glance or beaming smile. Look through your teenage years. Pass kindergarten and primary school. Then cover your teenage years. See how your parents have changed, how time didn't wait for anyone to catch up or save the last glimpses of youth and beauty. See how from the bubbling infant you shifted into a grown person and how much effort it took, how much time, space.
We discovered camera to catch moments and preserve memories in time, we created movies to make our legends and stories infinite, to spread the adaptation of the written word, to close happiness and pain in the jar of indestructible. Some pushed this possibility to another level. Imagine a film which leads you through the whole process of upbringing, allows you to see children grow, people age and change, circumstances shift, political systems and pop-culture obsessions turn around and take over. Imagine that it can be seen just like an old photo album, picture by picture, years after years. Boyhood. Maybe it's also your life preserved within the frames of a film. Enjoy.
In no relationship, you have the naive guarantee that it will last forever. You may wish that one-time fascination will lead to long-lasting happiness, but it is rarely so, taking into account the rate of divorces. You might swallow the bitter pill of realization that your devotion to your husband doesn't make sense and your efforts to make him satisfied are simply futile. He's the one who cheats on you, you know it, you feel less attractive and not desired at all. Will finding an attractive young woman and hatching a plan of his seduction save your marriage, be its biggest downfall, or wake up the long-forgotten eroticism? Or maybe you will fall into your own carefully planned trap? Chloe.
We, humans, are capable of various evils. We have shown over the centuries that hatred, mass-murders, being blinded by religion or philosophy are no strangers to us and form our everyday bread and butter. While being ashamed, we have to admit: we might be the most developed, but we tend to be the cruelest kind of all. But are we the only species inhabiting our planet, living among us, door to door, body to body, usurping our habits and customs? Or maybe some myths and legends are still here because there's no smoke without fire and they contain a substantial pinch of truth? What is the border between the two worlds, the world of humans, and the world or trolls? And looking at our worst crimes, can we tell for sure that we are in fact more human than those we consider the inferior sub-creatures? Food for thought, Border.






















