Language: Mandarin & French with English subtitles

Director: Ang Lee

Screenplay: Ang Lee, James Schamus & Hui-Ling Wang

Awards: Academy Award Nomination : Best Foreign Film

Cast: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei Yang, Wang Yu-wen, Chien-lien Wu, Sylvia Chang, Winston Chao, Chen Chao-jung

The story revolves around the Zhu family navigating the challenges of love, life, and family as they transition from tradition to modernity. The story is also about the special emphasis of food in their lives.

A widower, who works as an aging master chef at a hotel, lives a lonely life at home with his three single daughters. The old man is a great chef but a lousy communicator, and has no clue about what is going on in the lives of his daughters.However, the only way he can communicate with his daughters is via the ritualized Sunday feast he prepares every week. He would like to see them married but is too repressed to talk about it, and they would like to leave the house but don’t know how to.

The film comes alive during vivid scenes of exotic food being prepared as the chef uses cooking as an act of control, as a ritual, as the last language left to man who has lost the ability to communicate with his family. The love the father feels for his daughters is manifested in the complexities of the dishes he prepares for them. As the daughters gain strength to reveal their plans to depart from home it is the old man who instead shocks them with his own plans which frees his daughters from their obligation...

Film: House of Flying Daggers (2004) – China
Language: Mandarin with English subtitles
Director: Zhang Yimou
Screenplay: Feng Li, Bin Wang & Zhang Yimou
Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Cinematography
Cast: Takesh Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Ziyi Zhang, Dandan Song, Hongfei Zhao, Jun Guo
An epic romance inflamed with breathless sensuality and jaw-dropping visuals focuses on the process of love, emotions and feelings under the guise of a martial arts movie.A film that is a wild riot of colour, music, passion, action, mystery, pure old-fashioned thrills, and even dancing.
A blind revolutionary (Ziyi Zhang) is caught in a love triangle between two policemen (Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) who enlist her in the hunt to track down a gang of secret assassins known as the Flying Daggers. The two men close in on the blind girl, and their triangulated relationship is a fraught drama of double-cross and triple-cross, where nothing is as it seems, and whose impostures conceal a passionate, tragic love story. The trio trek across the ravaged beauty of Tang Dynasty China (actually shot in the Ukraine) and it sets the scene for some truly incredible action scenes as CGI daggers cut through the air at improbable speeds, cavalry charge through fields of flowers and a bamboo forest erupts into a gloriously intricate vertical battle. The director uses landscape as a mirror of the predicament of his characters confusion. A snow storm suggests ruthless, icy intentions. Martial arts have rarely been filmed with such artistry.

Language: English

Director: Peter Weir

Screenplay: David Williamson & Peter Weir, based on the novel by C.J. Koch

Awards: Academy Award:Best Supporting Actress (Linda Hunt)

Cast: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Bembol Roco, Michael Murphy, Ali Nur, Bill Kerr

A suspenseful tale of intrigue and a sweeping romance set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno during the events of 1965 in Jakarta amidst a growing division in politics.

The film revolves around an Australian journalist (Mel Gibson) who goes to the city to cover the events with the aid of a Chinese-Australian (Linda Hunt) while falling for an assistant (Sigourney Weaver) . The film plays into a lot of drama that occurs in Indonesia during a tumultuous period of civil and social unrest where foreign correspondents try to understand what is going on.

The setting of the story is vibrant and unique – Indonesia during the Sixties. It recreates the period in stunning detail – the slums, the sweaty cramped offices, seedy bars, plush hotels, and poverty rubbing shoulders with elegance. While the film was shot in Australia and the Philippines, it was banned in Indonesia until 2000.

Film: In Custody (1994) – UK / India
Language: Urdu with English subtitles
Director: Ismail Merchant
Screenplay: Shahrukh Hussain & Anita Desai
Awards: National Film Award for Shashi Kapoor
Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, Sushma Seth, Neena Gupta, Tinnu Anand, Parikshat Sahni, Amjad Khan
An adaptation of Anita Desai’s novel which explores cultural and linguistic heritage along with decay in human relationships and the disappointments of life.
The narrative centers on Deven Sharma (Om Puri), a timid Hindi professor in Mirpur, lured by his friend Murad (Tinnu Anand) to interview Nur Shahjehanabadi (Shashi Kapoor), a fading Urdu poet. Deven seeks escape from his mundane life but finds Nur surrounded by chaos—drunken admirers, jealous wives, and personal decline. The plot unfolds as a comedy of errors, with Deven becoming the reluctant custodian of Nur’s final poems. Deven, who was the lifelong admirer of Nur's work, finds the man in pitiable condition, a far cry from his literary genius.
Merchant directs with a focus on character depth and balances subtle humor and melancholy to reflect Deven’s internal struggle. The portrayal of Urdu’s decline serves as a backdrop, treated with respect yet critiqued through Nur’s decadent lifestyle. The music underscores ghazals and poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, enhancing the authenticity of the film's central narrative. Faiz's poetry is used throughout the film as Nur's words. Merchant filmed in Bhopal to capture authentic settings, avoiding studio sets.

Film - The Last Samurai (2003) - USA
Language - English
Director - Edward Zwick
Screenplay - Edward Zwick, John Logan, Marshall Herskovitz
Academy Award Nominations - Supporting Actor (Ken Watanabe), Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound
Cast - Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, William Atherton, Billy
Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Timothy Spall

"Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic" ...Robert Ebert of Chicago Sun- Times
The scope of the film is grand, and all its elements - from the cinematography, to the acting, to its beautiful score - all work to enhance it along the way...

The film is about war, the modernization of a country, and about the violent push and pull between progress and tradition.The Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic period action drama film . The plot was inspired by the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion , led by Saigo Takamori, and the Westernisation of Japan by foreign powers. Japan hires an American Civil War veteran ( Tom Cruise) to train their army with modern warfare techniques in order to fight against the all-powerful Samurai clans. However, his life changes in profound ways when he is captured by the Samurai during battle, and he comes into contact with their leader (Ken Watanabe). He slowly comes to love the culture of the very people he has come to destroy.

In 1876, former U.S Army Captain Nathan Algren, an alcoholic traumatized by his actions during the American Indian Wars, is approached by his former commanding officer, Colonel Bagley. Bagley asks him to train the newly created Imperial Japanese Army for a Japanese businessman, Matsue Omura, who intends to use the army to suppress a Samurai rebellion against Japan's new emperor. Tom Cruise portrays Nathan Algren, an American captain- whose personal and emotional conflicts bring him into contact with Samurai warriors in the wake of the Meiji restoration in 19th. Century Japan...

The Last Samurai grossed a total of $456 million at the box office and became the sixth highest grossing fimof 2003.It received praise for the acting, visuals, cinematography and score. It was nominated for several awards, including four Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two National Board of Review Awards.

Film: Ramchand Pakistani (2008) - Pakistan
Language: Urdu/Hindi (with English subtitles)
Director: Mehreen Jabbar
Screenplay: Mohammad Ahmed & Javed Jabbar
Dubai Film Festival: Best Film
Cast: Nandita Das, Rashid Farooqi, Syed Fazal Hussain, Hassan Niazi
A poignant and moving tale which dramatizes a family’s struggle against social and religious discrimination to contextualize the complicated relationship between Pakistan and India.Mehreen Jabbar delicately touches on themes of class barriers without taking sides allowing no judgment or finger pointing which lets us, the viewers, focus instead on the human story.
Adapted from real events, it begins in 2002 when an eight-year-old boy from the ‘’untouchable’’ Hindu Dalit caste in the Thar Desert accidently crosses the Pakistani- Indian border. Precocious young Ramchand (Syed Hassan Fazal), angry at his mother Champa (Nandita Das), runs away from his village and wanders over the border into neighboring India. His father Shankar (Rashid Farooqi) anxiously chases after him but both father and son are captured by the Indian border patrol and jailed. Their fellow detainees are mostly people, who like them, have walked unwittingly across the border and have remained imprisoned for many years, some losing their minds and others losing hope. Meanwhile the distraught Champa refuses to give up hope and waits years for the return of her husband and son. 
Simply told story details the lives of the poor who have been incarcerated due to unmitigated red tape and bureaucracy which, due to tensions between both countries, spells doom for poor people whose lives are spent in waiting. The screenplay follows the day-to-day life of the child as he interacts with other prisoners, the male prison warden and one female warden (Maria Wasti) who is made responsible for the child’s education. She is a mother-figure, but refuses to touch the child because of his low caste...

Film: A Passage to India (1984) - UK

Language: English

Director: David Lean

Screenplay: David Lean, based on the novel by E.M. Forster

Academy Award Nominations:

• Best Picture
• Director (David Lean)
• Actress (Judy Davis)
• Screenplay, Sound, Production Design, Editing, Costume
• Design & Cinematography

Academy Award wins:

• Supporting Actress (Peggy Ashcroft)
• Music

Cast: Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, James Fox, Peggy Ashcroft, Alec Guinness, Saeed Jaffrey, Nigel Havers, Art Malik, Roshan Seth, Dina Pathak

Epic adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel is about class conflict and set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s.

The story revolves around a British school teacher (Judy Davis), newly arrived in India and accompanied by an elderly friend (Peggy Ashcroft) whose son is to be a prospective suitor for her. They are introduced to a local doctor (Victor Banerjee) who later arranges a picnic to the nearby Malabar caves. During the outing a misunderstanding occurs where the young lady accuses the doctor of assaulting her inside one of the caves. The subsequent trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring to a boil the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and British.

Though vast in physical scale and set against a tumultuous Indian background, the film is also intimate, funny and moving, featuring a great ensemble cast, beautiful images of the Indian locations, an enchanting music score, and a riveting story.

• In collaboration with Serena Hotel, Islamabad

Film: Howard's End (1992) - UK/USA

Language: English

Duration: 2 hr 22 min

Director: James Ivory

Screenplay: Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, based on the book by E. M. Forster

Academy Award Nominations:

• Best Picture, Director (James Ivory)
• Supporting Actress (Vanessa Redgrave)
• Cinematography, Costume Design & Music Score

Academy Awards:

• Best Actress (Emma Thompson)
• Screenplay
• Production Design

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, James Wilby, Prunella Scales, Samuel West, Jemma Redgrave

One of the most literate of E.M. Forster's novels becomes an equally literate film thanks to the finely nuanced screenplay of Ruth Prawer Jhabvalla.

The plot centers on class structure, family, hypocricy, real estate and Forster's dismay at how things were changing (though inevitable) during the Edwardian era where the different classes were starting to move in the same circles due to the gradual social changes taking place in Britain.

Three families - the reserved upper class Wilcoxes, who represent greedy old capitalits, the idealistic and artistic middleclass Schlegels, and the lower-middleclass downtrodden Basts - come together and clash.

At the center of the story is the house (Howards End) which plays a big part in the lives of all three families and involves treachery, lies, love and death.

The drama begins when Henry J. Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins), a stuffy money-obsessed businessman, falls in love with free-spirited Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson) after his wife Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave) dies. When his widow wills away their house to Margaret it causes a lot of family turmoil. Meanwhile her sister, Helen Schlegal (Helena Bonham Carter), tries with disastrous results to help Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a working-class married man. Both sisters find themselves tested as they try to end the Wilcoxes' prejudice and help the Basts.

Superbly-mounted story of British class tension, with exceptional performances all around.

• In collaboration wit Alliance Francaise d'Islamabad

Language: English

Duration: 1 hr 51 min

Director: Arthur Penn

Screenplay: Robert Benton & David Newman

Academy Award Nominations: Best Picture, Director (Arthur Penn), Actor (Warren Beatty), Actress (Faye Dunaway), Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Supporting Actor (Michael J. Pollard), Screenplay & Costume Design

Academy Award wins: Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons), Cinematography

Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder, Denver Pyle, Evans Evans

A landmark American film that uniquely combined European art-house aesthetics with mainstream Hollywood cinematics.

The film came with the tagline:"They’re young. They’re in love. They rob banks...’ It is a film containing dynamic power that stays fresh with each viewing !

Warren Beatty stars in this gangster film as small-time bank robber Clyde Barrow who joins up with Faye Dunaway as bored small-town waitress Bonnie Parker, to embark on a series of violent robberies in the Depression-era American Mid-West. Their legendary crime spree captures the newspaper headlines and catches the imagination of the American public. Both seemed to have the knack of entertaining people. Bonnie wrote ballads and mailed them in with pictures Clyde took with his Kodak. They seemed to consider themselves public servants, bringing a little sparkle to the poverty and despair of the Dust Bowl during the early Depression years. In the public's eye they were celebrated specifically as heroic bank robbers and were seen as a modern-day version of Robin Hood's gang.

The film is a milestone in the history of American movies and one of the definitive films of the 1960s. It paved the way not only for more realistic crime drama but also for a more open and mature interpretation of life and crime.

Language: French (with English subtitles)

Duration: 1 hr 58 min

Director: Stéphane Demoustier

Screenplay: Stéphane Demoustier & Pascal Garbarini

César Award: Best Actress (Hafsia Herzi)

Cast: Hafsia Herzi, Moussa Mansaly, Louis Memmi, Michel Fau, Pablo Pauly

Rating: PG-13

A breathtaking and captivating film is inspired by true events.

The film attempts to explore the thin line between good and evil and how sometimes dire life circumstances tip a person over to the dark side.

A prison guard Mélissa (Hafsia Herzi) is transferred to Borgo penitentiary center on the island of Corsica. She is accompanied by her husband and two children. The prison is composed mainly of Corsican inmates and operates under an open regime. Namely, the prisoners can freely roam as they please all day long, playing football, cards or doing bodybuilding. She manages to integrate into this unusual set-up thanks to a young inmate who seems to have influence there. However, when this inmate is released from prison he contacts Mélissa again to ask for a favour, which sets a dangerous plot in motion where she finds herself implicated in a double murder for which she is suspected of complicity.

• In collaboration with Alliance Francaise d' Islamabad