Upcoming Blu-rays and DVDs:
The Salesman
Synopsis: Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighbour's building, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) move into a new flat in the centre of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple's life. Starring Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi, and Mina Sadati.
STREET DATE: MAY 29.
Graduation
Synopsis: Internationally acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu returns with a powerful and universal study about the imprecision of parenthood, the relativity of truth and the ambiguity of compromise, revealed by a father-daughter relationship.
Romeo Aldea (49), a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student.
On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter. Starring Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, and Rares Andrici.
STREET DATE: MAY 15.
It's Only the End of the World
Prodigious auteur Xavier Dolan (Mommy) comes of age with his dazzling sixth film, based on the play of the same name by Jean-Luc Lagarce and featuring an all-star cast of top French actors.
After 12 years of estrangement, a writer (Gaspard Ulliel) returns to his hometown, planning on announcing his impending death to his family. However, his mother (Nathalie Baye), tempestuous siblings (Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux) and beleaguered sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard) have their own personal grievances to air. As buried resentments threaten to surface and fits and feuds begin to unfold, all attempts at empathy are sabotaged by the family's inability to listen and love.
Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, It's Only the End of the World is a bold and stylistically daring melodrama performed with thunderous emotion. Taut, tense and packed with explosive performances shot in claustrophobic close-up, it further confirms Dolan as one of the most singular talents in world cinema. Starring Gaspard Ulliel, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, and Nathalie Baye.
STREET DATE: APRIL 24.
Rivers and Tides
Synopsis: Documentary profile of renowned sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, famed for his work using natural materials such as ice, stone, leaves, and wood. Shot in four countries across four seasons, the documentary offers an insight into Goldsworthy's painstaking creative processes, and the elusive nature of his work, which is often destroyed by nature and by the passing of time.
STREET DATE: MARCH 27.
UPCOMING DVD ONLY RELEASES
1. Katell Quillévéré's Heal the Living - June 26.
2. Pete Middleton and James Spinney's Notes on Blindness - April 10.
3. Rama Burshtein's Through the Wall - February 20.