Our Sundance Film Festival DVD pack contains three great films that have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival. These films include MONSTER THURSDAY from Norway, MANITO from the USA, and ALI ZAOUA from Morocco.MONSTER THURSDAY: Even leads a directionless life; he's kind of guy who never completes anything. Tord, his best friend, is the opposite: a great surfer with a prestigious job and beautiful Karen as his bride. The last part is especially hard on Even, who is not-so-secretly in love with Karen. When Tord asks him to look after Karen while he is out of town, Even decides to clean up and master surfing to impress her. At first he's a prime candidate for drowning, but a local surfing legend becomes his mentor, and Even, Tord and Karen end up on a collision course with the monster wave. Official Selection - Sundance Film Festival. In Norwegian with English subtitles.
"Monster Thursday marks the emergence of an electrifying new voice in Scandinavian cinema" --Trevor Groth, Sundance Film Festival.
MANITO: Manito chronicles the life of a family in Washington Heights, a vibrant Latino community still living under the legacy of an era shadowed by drugs and violence. Manny (Leo Minaya) is the salutatorian of his high school class, about to escape that same legacy that had forced his older brother Junior Moreno (rising star Frankie G.) to spend time in prison. Winner - Sundance, Tribeca and South by Southwest Film Festivals.
"Mr. Eason, using a hand-held camera and a largely new or nonprofessional cast, brilliantly captures the pulse of daily life in working-class, immigrant New York: the hectic rhythms of labor, leisure and family life, the stresses and pleasures, the anxieties and hopes." --A.O. Scott, New York Times.
ALI ZAOUA: Ali, Kwita, Omar, and Boubker are a group of street urchins living on the hard streets of Casablanca. Their everyday lives are filled with violence, begging, and indifference. In order to survive they create a bond of friendship and family between then. The bond is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film by a blow to the head; his life taken by a single act of a rival gang. Ali's friends decide not to report his death to the police, who would have the boy buried in a potter's field. Instead they decide to give him a worthy burial, to bury Ali on the private island he so often dreamed of. Official Selection - Sundance, Toronto, Berlin and Seattle Film Festivals. In Arabic with English subtitles.
"Director Nabil Ayouch takes a subject that could be thoroughly depressing (the life of street kids in Morocco's port city of Casablanca) and -- through a simple story line, dramatic acting and National Geographic-like shots of the city's rough and pristine edges -- creates cinematic magic." --Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle
