THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Banner Film Society in the city is coming up with another of its monthly treat for the cinematic lovers in the city. This time, the society would be screening a list of classic dramas released the previous year.
The first among the movies to be shown is ‘Room’, a 2015 Canadian-Irish independent drama film. The film directed by Lenny Abrahamson, based on a novel of the same name, has it’s plot revolving around a 24-year-old woman and her five-year-old son who are being held captive by an abusive man in a squalid little room for seven long years. Making her son Jack believe that only the room is real and everything else shown on the television is fake, the movie narrates how Joy later resolves to escape out of the room with her son. Puzzled and caught with disbelief at the world outside, ‘Room’ talks about the struggles the pair goes through to adapt to the outside world. A critically acclaimed film, it went on to receive a BAFTA award, the Academy Award for the best actress, a golden globe award, three Academy Award nominations and more.
‘Son of Saul’, a 2015 Hungarian film is another critically acclaimed drama worth watching at the film fest. Directed by Laszlo Nemes and based on the infamous Aushwitz concentration camp, the movie revolves around the events during a day=and-a-half in the life of Saul Auslander, a Jewish-Hungarian prisoner and Sonderkommando. Numbed by the daily horrors within the gas chambers, ‘Son of Saul’ follows his attempts to give a proper burial to a Jewish boy executed in the chambers and his eventual escape to the woods. The film premiered at the last year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning the Grand Prix. It also gathered a number of other accolades including the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.
The other two award-winning dramas to be screened are the 2015 Internationally co-produced film ‘Embrace of the Serpent’ and the 2015 Columbian drama film ‘Land and Shade’. A film shot extensively in black and white, the former narrates the journey of two scientists, thirty years apart, assisted by an Amazonian Shaman in their search for a rare and sacred plant called Yacruna ‘Land and Shade’ directed by Cesar Augusto Acevedo is a story of a man who returns to his family in Columbia after a long gap. Showcasing the strange bond between him and his family members along with the external conflicting situations, it also speaks briefly of the workers’ situation then.
The films would be screened at Lenin Balavadi on October 23.