Mental Health

MN Sneak Preview | Director Mara Pelecis Present

Lyrical, intimate, and sometimes humorous, Souvenirs is a moving eulogy in film. Following her father’s suicide, director Mara Pelecis reveals the hidden layers of Ivars ‘Andy’ Pelecis’ elusive mental health, as his case for service related mental illness is reopened post-mortem.

The lines between loyalty and treachery are blurred in this story of family and politics from Academy Award nominee and veteran director Jan Hrebejk (Divided We Fall). 

Czech psychiatrist Pavel Josek is scheduled to receive the prestigious "Memory of the Nation" award for his work as a former dissident, but revelations about his past jeopardize everything he's worked toward.  This information forces both the characters, and the audience, into a past everyone would much rather forget. 

Director Denis Côté Present

Côté's bewitching fifth feature is not what you might call a sports film. Even the second and far more frequent game—that of bowling—only marginally figures into the dramatic pulp and enigmatic nuances of the film, despite the fact that a bowling alley serves as one of the film's more prominent settings. - Slant Magazine

Expertly crafted, evocative images pull us into rural Quebec's beguiling winter stillness.  Curling tells the story of one father's (Jean-François Sauvageau) attempts to keep his daughter in complete isolation, hoping to spare her the scars he knows too well. 

In this story of two Istanbuls, the old vistas vs. the manic present, Mithat, an elder in the increasingly young city, struggles to preserve the city’s rich past through otherwise mundane possessions.  Mithat befriends new caretaker Ali, a provincial Turk who hopes to usher his family into the new era stocked with the comforts of urban modernity. When a minor earthquake incites his neighbors to demand demolition and reconstruction of their apartment complex, the octogenarian stands his ground. In her first feature-length fiction, veteran documentarian Pelin Esmer extracts deft, honest performances from her amateur cast, including her own Uncle as Mithat. 10 to 11 takes hold just as Mr. Esmer takes up battle for a city that's slipping away from him.