Film Descriptions

SUMMER-FALL 2025 DAVIDSON FILM CLUB SCREENINGS

JULY 26 RASHOMON

Directed by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, in Japanese w/English subtitles, 1951, 1h28)

Rashomon is a profound meditation on human nature from Japanese cinema grand master Akira Kurosawa told through the lens of several unreliable narrators. Rashomon relays the story of a sexual assault and murder from three differing perspectives with the principal players, a wife, her husband, and a bandit, all offering conflicting and self-serving accounts. Each retelling offers a further strand to the web we as viewers are asked to untangle […]. Stunning black and white visuals ranging from rain and wind-swept ruins, sweaty and desperate sword battles, and expertly composed court room confessionals.

Discussion leader: Lawrence Toppman, former award-winning film, theater, and music critic for the Charlotte Observer.

August 23: Walter Salles, I’m Still Here (Brazil, 2024, 2h17)

One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice, whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades.

Discussion Leader: Prof. Hammurabi Mendez, Dept. of Mathematics, Davidson College; native of Brazil.

SEPTEMBER 20: PAST LIVES

Directed by Celine Song (So. Korea, in Korean w/English subtitles, 2023, 1h40)

In Korea, Na Young, a 12-year-old girl, and Hae Sung, a boy, are schoolmates and good friends. Na Young moves to Canada and then to New York with her parents. During a twenty-year period, Hae Sung continues living in Korea, completes an engineering degree, goes through a short spell of military service, and then takes up a job. Both keep in touch periodically through video chats where they talk of their past and general stuff. Meanwhile in New York, Na has changed her name to Nora, made a name as a playwright, and is happily married to Arthur, an American writer. Hae is keen to meet Nora and visits her in New York where he spends some time with her and Arthur. What does the future have in store for Nora and Hae?

Discussion Leader: Matt Cramer, film critic at the on-line blog Y’All Weekly.

OCTOBER 18: ANATOMY OF A FALL

Directed by Justine Triet (France, in French w/English subtitles, 2023, 2h31)

The story begins when Samuel is found dead in the snow outside the isolated chalet where he lived with his wife Sandra, a German writer, and their half-blind 11-year-old son Daniel. An investigation leads to a conclusion of “suspicious death,” but it’s impossible to know for sure whether he took his own life or was killed. Sandra is indicted, and we follow her trial which pulls the couple’s relationship apart. Daniel is caught in the middle: between the trial and their home life, doubts take their toll on the mother-son relationship.

Discussion Leader: Prof. Cris Robu, Dept. of French and Francophone Studies, Davidson College.

NOVEMBER 22: THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN

Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania (Tunisia, in Arabic, French, and English w/English subtitles, 2020, 1h44)

Sam Ali, a Syrian young man, took refuge in Lebanon to flee the Syrian civil war. There, he meets Jeffrey Godefroi, a famous tattoo artist, who makes Mr. Ali’s back his canvas for a piece of work. Soon Mr. Ali becomes a living work of art, worth an astronomical sum on the art market. Collectors are interested, auction goes up, human rights activists are outraged. Mr. Ali must get out of the predicament he’s in; the man who sold his skin.

Discussion Leader: Kamel Bouchoucha, native of Tunisia.