Tag: death sentence

From Hilde, With Love
(In Liebe, Eure Hilde)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 June 2025
No Comments on From Hilde, With Love
(In Liebe, Eure Hilde)
Sticky post

Director – Andreas Dresen – 2024 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 125m

***

A young, pregnant German woman involved with a group of radicals trying to undermine the Nazi regime is arrested and put on trial with a possible death sentence – out in UK cinemas accompanied by the Kate Bush short Little Shrew (Snowflake) on Friday, June 27th

Its opening, pre-credits moments of a German mother and bespectacled, pregnant adult daughter picking strawberries in the garden belies what is to follow, but that sense of calm doesn’t last long as two barely seen black cars pull up in the lane. The pregnant woman packs a suitcase before the two men accompany her out to the car. How long will it take, she asks. That depends on you, comes the reply.

In the lift, the big, burly man asks after her pregnancy. It seems his wife, too, is expecting. When she is questioned in the interrogation room, she is asked about her husband’s radio equipment, on the table in front of her in a suitcase. She makes up stories about her innocence and ignorance, but they (including, when we finally see him, the man from the lift) run rings round her.… Read the rest

Tags Andreas Dresen, arrest, authorities, birth, boat, cell, child born in prison, civilian life, complicit, death sentence, expecting, fear, female guard, fool around, From Hilde With Love, garden, German, Germany, gruel, handheld camera, Hans-Christian Hegewald, health, husbands and wives, idyllic afternoon, ignorance, innocence, interrogation, lift, Lisa Hrdina, Lisa Wagner, Liv Lisa Fries, maternal exercises, Nazi, Nazi regime, pack a suitcase, parachutist, plead a case, plead your case, plotting, plotting against the Nazis, post, pregnancy, pregnant, prison, prison cell, prison hospital, prison hospital birth sequence, questioned, radicals, radio equipment, radio messages, riverbank, ruthless, shot in one take, signaller, spectacles, spy, stimulate milk production, strawberries, strip-search, suitcase, the Front, transcribe, trial, unborn child, women friends, women’s health

Features Live Action Movies

The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 February 2025
No Comments on The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)
Sticky post

Director – Mohammad Rasoulof – 2024 – Iran, Germany, France – Cert. 15 – 167m

*****

An Iranian state functionary, married with two teenage daughters, is promoted to the position of judge at the same time as the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt… And then, his gun goes missing at home… – out on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 9th 2025

A film so extraordinarily brilliant that it is almost impossible to conceive.

An opening intertitle explains the remarkable life cycle of a tree which grows on one of the southern Iranian islands. Its seeds fall onto the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds then germinate, and their roots move towards the ground. When the roots reach the ground, the sacred fig tree stands on its own feet and its branches strangle the host tree.

2022. The tireless and diligent work of state functionary Iman (Missagh Zareh) has finally been rewarded; he is to be appointed a judge. In a repressive regime like Iran, that’s not a job looked upon favourably by most of the population, so his work gives him a pistol just in case he should need to defend himself or his family. At home, in the Tehran apartment where he lives with his family, he keeps the weapon in a drawer.… Read the rest

Tags 2022, Amineh Arani, authorities, beaten, behave, best behaviour, bestie, career and promotion, case files, cat and mouse, cells, college, corridor, death sentence, drawer, family night out, family row, France, Germany, germination, home, hometown, husbands and wives, imprisonment, incarceration, interrogator city and country, Iran, Islam, Islamist, judge, keep women down, labyrinth, life cycle, Mahsa Rostami, Missagh Zareh, missing gun, Mohammad Rasoulof, mother, Niousha Akhshi, non-conformism, overwork, parents and children, parents and daughters, parents and teenagers, patriarchy, pistol, promotion, protests, radical and conservative, regime, repression, rooftop, roots, rubber stamp, scrupulous, Setareh Maleki, sisters, social climber, social divide, Soheila Golestani, state functionary, status quo, strangulation, strict Islamic dress codes, teenage angst, Tehran, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, totalitarian, tower, tree, Women Life Freedom, workload, wound

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Free Chol Soo Lee

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 19 August 2022
No Comments on Free Chol Soo Lee
Sticky post

Directors – Julia Ha, Eugene Yi – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 83m

****

Imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, Korean American Chol Soo Lee became a figurehead for a protest movement, something he felt unable to live up to – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 19th

In San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1973, Korean loner Chol Soo Lee was arrested and subsequently convicted for a gang murder. While it’s true he had foolishly borrowed a gun off a work colleague a few days previously and accidentally discharged it into his apartment wall giving himself a police record, he was not the murderer. He was identified on the flimsiest of premises by unreliable witnesses, possibly not helped by white cops who wanted to convict a felon for the crime and consign the case to history.

On what was to be his last journey through the outside world before many years in prison, he heard the Tower of Power song “You’re still a young man” on a car radio crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. It resonated. As the years passed in prison, his mother abandoned him. He had fallen for a Japanese American girl he’d met Jean Ranko who subsequently told him in a letter that she had no romantic interest in him.… Read the rest