MULTICULTURAL MOVIES

COMENIUS MULTILATERAL 2009/2011Intercultural Competences Across the School Curriculum

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BILLY ELLIOT

Stephen Daldry

United Kingdom

2001

110’The film is set during the 1984-1985 UK miner’s strike, and centres on the character of 11-year-old Billy Elliot, his love of dance, and his hope to become a professional ballet dancer. Billy lives with his widowed father, Jackie, older brother, Tony (both coal miners out on strike) and his invalid Nan, who once aspired to be a professional dancer.Jackie takes Billy to the Sports Centre to learn boxing, but Billy dislikes the sport. He is instead drawn to a ballet class that is using the gym, but the traditions and the prejudices become huge problems…

BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT

Emir Kusturica

Yugoslavia

1998

129’Matko Destanov, a small-time Roma smuggler and profiteer, is living with his teenage son Zare in a ramshackle house by the Danube River in eastern Serbia near the Bulgarian border. After a failed business deal he owes money to the much more successful gangster Dadan. Dadan has a sister, Afrodita, that he desperately wants to see get married so they strike a deal: Zare is to marry her. But none of the two care much for an arranged marriage: Zare is in love with Ida, Afrodita is waiting for the man of her dreams…

BRIDES

Pantelis Voulgaris

Greece

2004

128’

Set in the 1920s, the film reflects the uncertainties of those

years in the Balkans, characterized by conflict, poverty and

nationalism, and men from many countries looking to the New

World as an opportunity to start a better life and to support

those at home. We follow the story of a mail order bride, one

of 700 aboard the SS King Alexander, who falls in love with an

American photographer. She is bound for her new husband, in

USA; he is on his way home to a failed marriage.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

Cristian Nemescu

Romania

2007

155’

In 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, a train

containing American radar equipment required in Kosovo,

guarded by American and Romanian soldiers, goes through

Romania and is stopped for four days in a small village on the

Baragan Plain, because some customs papers were missing…

Doiaru's (train station chief) daughter, Monica, develops a

crush on an American soldier, but as she knows no English, she

uses the help of a local geek, Andrei, who is in love with her…

CARAMEL

Nadine Labaki

Lebano

2007

95’

Caramel revolves around the intersecting lives of five

Lebanese women, in Beirut: Layale, Nisrine, Rima, Jamale

and Rose. Each one has a problem…

The film doesn't refer to any of the political problems or

recent warfare that has troubled Lebanon. Rather, Labaki's

tale paints everyday people (particularly, women) with

everyday problems.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

Elia Suleiman

Palestine/Israel/Moroco/Germany

2003

92’

In Nazareth, Santa Claus runs away from children as gifts

fall from his basket. He's been stabbed and leans against a

tree. Neighbors bicker over small stuff. A Palestinian

couple meets in a car. More bickering neighbors.

A tourist asks an Israeli policeman for directions. Unable to

help her himself, the policeman brings out a blindfolded

Palestinian prisoner from the back of his van. The

Palestinian tells her three different possible routes…

GABBEH

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Iran

1996

85’

The film gets its name from a type of Persian rug and starts

by showing an elderly couple, carrying their Gabbeh,

walking toward the river hoping to wash their rug. When

the rug is spread on the ground, a girl, referred to as

Gabbeh, magically comes out of it. The movie follows her

story and audience learn about her family, her uncle who

is hoping to find a bride, and most importantly her longing

for a young man she hopes to marry.

THE HATE

Mathieu Kassovitz

France

1995

93’

This film focuses on a single day in the lives of three

friends in their early twenties, from immigrant families

living in an impoverished multi-ethnic French housing

project in the suburbs of Paris, in the aftermath of a riot.

Abdel, a local hoodlum, is hospitalized after the riot, where

a policeman lost his gun. His friend Vinz finds it and claims

he will kill a cop if Abdel dies…

KANDAHAR

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Iran

2001

81’

Hidden behind a burqa, Nafas, the sister from Canada,

makes her way across the border with a family of refugees.

When they are robbed by brigands and the family turns

back, she decides to continue on her way, accompanied

first by a young boy who was just expelled from a Qur’anic

school, and then by an African American convert to Islam,

who has become disillusioned with the turn the country

has taken under the Taliban.

LISBON PEOPLE

Sérgio Trefaut

Portugal

2004

105’

Throughout the twentieth century, Portugal was a land of

emigrants. Today, it is a land of immigrants. An important

part of these came from Eastern Europe and has a level of

education higher than average. But also Brazilian, Chinese,

Indian, African... Will these immigrants change Lisbon and

Portugal? Will they leave to resign by the country's indolence

resigned?

LIVE AND BECOME

Radu Mitlaileanu

France

2005

140’In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as

genuine Jews. In turn they are secretly carried to Israel. The

day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In

his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-

year-old boy. Upon arrival this second mother dies. Schlomo

is adopted by a good family but remains depressed until he

secretly sends a letter to his real mother. From the beginning

he experiences large and small racist difficulties…

THE NAMESAKE

Mira Nair

India/USA

2006

122’

The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima

Ganguli, two first-generation immigrants from West

Bengal, India to the United States, and their American-

born children Gogol and Sonia. Gogol wants to fit in

among his fellow New Yorkers, despite his family's

unwillingness to let go of their traditional ways.

The film takes place primarily in Kolkata, India; then, in

New York City and various New York state suburbs.

THE PROMISE

Luc e Jean-Pierre Dardenne

Belgium/France/Luxemburg

1996

93’

Igor and his father, Roger, are making a decent living

renting apartments to illegal immigrants and sometimes

working them illegally (among other scams). But when the

building inspector pays a surprise visit and Amidou falls off

a scaffold in his hurry to hide, things start to unravel,

particularly when Igor makes a promise to the injured

Amidou that ultimately exposes the different values of Igor

and Roger, and of Amidou's wife, Assita.

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN

Abdellatif Kechiche

France

2008

151’

At the port of Sète, Mr. Slimani, a tired 60-year-old, drags

himself toward a shipyard job that has become more and

more difficult to cope with as the years go by. He is a divorced

father who forces himself to stay close to his family despite

the schisms and tensions that are easily sparked off and that

financial difficulties make even more intense. He wants to

escape from it all and set up his own restaurant. However, it

appears to be an unreachable dream given his meagre…

THE VISITOR

Thomas Mcarthy

USA

2007

104’Walter Vale is a widowed economics professor who lives a fairly solitary existence. When he arrives at the apartment he maintains in Manhattan, he is startled to discover a young unmarried couple living there, having rented it from a swindler who claimed it was his. They are Tarek, a Palestinian-Syrian djembe player, and Zainab, a Senegalese designer of ethnic jewelry. He later discovers both are illegal immigrants. Although they have no place to go, they hastily pack and leave, but Walter decides to let them stay. Over the next few days, a friendship slowly develops…

WATER

Deepa Mehta

Canada/India

2005

114’

The film examines the plight of a group of widows forced

into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. It

focuses on a relationship between one of the widows, who

wants to escape the social restrictions imposed on

widows, and a man who is from the highest caste and a

follower of Mahatma Gandhi.