Ind-E-Focus

Art house films are the hidden gems of the film industry, displaying the best unknown or up and coming film making skills that the world has to offer. These wonderful pieces of artwork are a must see for the Independent Film maker, giving you a taste of the quirky, poetic and surreal visions on offer from across the globe. There are a number of films to look forward to this year. Nick Roddick of The Evening Standards, Thisisloncon.co.uk gives us a list of a few that you should keep an eye on this year:

Moscow
Belgium (13 February)
Nothing to do with Russia: Moscou is a grim working-class suburb of Ghent and this first film is about a quite spectacularly inappropriate love affair between a woman struggling to bring up two kids and a soft-hearted truck driver in a sleeveless vest. It is engagingly acted — lead actress Barbara Sarafian is marvellous: stroppy and heartbreaking at the same time — and has a great score by jazz accordionist Tuur Florizoone.

Three Monkeys
Turkey (13 February)
It may prove too austere for some tastes but the new film from Turkish maestro Nuri Bilge Ceylan, director of Distant and Climates, is almost a soap opera by his standards. A driver agrees to take the fall for his businessman boss; the boss casually hits on his wife while he's inside. Like the three monkeys, all remain deaf, dumb and blind to the truth and tear themselves accordingly apart. Worth seeing if only for Gökhan Tiryaki's digitally manipulated cinematography, which makes Turkey look simultaneously radiant and ominous.

The Class
France (27 February)
More Ken Loach than Claude Lelouch, this documentary-style account of life in an inner-city, multi-ethnic French classroom stars François Bégaudeau, who wrote the book on which the film is based, drawing on his own experiences as a teacher. He's great and the kids are extraordinary, all of which has been duly remarked upon. Less noted is the final act, which pulls the rug out from under the “embattled teacher” genre and knocks the Bégaudeau character off the moral high-ground. An extraordinary film, brilliantly directed by Laurent Cantet and well-deserving of its Cannes Palme d'Or.

Fermat's Room
Spain (27 February)
Spain has launched a new brand of arthouse horror in the past few years with The Others, [Rec] and The Orphanage. Aimed at a similar demographic — gamers — Fermat's Room is a problem-solving thriller. A group of smart young things are trapped in a room that shrinks each time they fail to solve a mathematical problem. The idea is ingenious (Darren Aronofksy's Pi is a distant cousin), the storytelling is effective and the threat that the four will become pressed meat keeps up the tension.

Flame & Citron
Denmark (6 March)
A massive hit in its native Denmark, this is a tense and well-told war movie about two resistance heroes in Nazi occupied Copenhagen. One is red haired, the other has a fondness for a certain make of French car. If it was a Hollywood movie with, say, Toby Maguire and Russell Crowe, Flame & Citron would have a guaranteed audience.As it is, it could succumb to the Sod's Law of foreign language cinema: make a arthouse movie too commercial and you risk losing both audiences.

In the City of Sylvia
France (13 March)
One for the dedicated arthouse crowd: a lovelorn artist follows a girl around Strasbourg all day and finally plucks up the courage to speak to her. Sounds tedious but there is a real sense of magic in this film by Spanish director Jose Luis Guerin, which wowed critics in Venice 18 months ago.

Il Divo
Italy (3 April)
Overshadowed by the more rambunctious Gomorrah, Il Divo is the true arthouse jewel of the year, from Italy or anywhere else. It is a stylistically gorgeous, seductive and very funny portrait of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, whose ability to hold on to power despite everything (including a murder charge) makes him one of the most fascinating figures of the last century. Don't worry if you know nothing about Italian politics: the sheer verve of director Paolo Sorrentino's style (he made The Consequences of Love) should sweep you away. If you have one tiny little arthouse corner in your cinematic heart, treat it to this one.

Katyn
Poland (10 April)
One of the worst war crimes of World War II — the massacre of 15,000 Polish prisoners of war by the Soviet NKVD on 5 March, 1940 — is given solid, somewhat old-fashioned but undeniably powerful treatment by veteran Polish director Andrzej Wajda in Katyn, which borrows its title from the forest where the massacre took place. Telling the story — denied by the Russians until as recently as 1989 — has been a passion project for the now 82-year-old Wajda.

Let the Right One In
Sweden (17 April)
Forget Twilight: this is the teenage vampire movie that joins up the dots between puberty and vampirism (clue: they both involve encountering strange new desires and bring about frightening changes in your body). Based on a Swedish bestseller, the film features Oskar, who is bullied at school but finds kinship with Eli, the strange girl next door who turns out to be a... I'm guessing you're ahead of me here. Chilly, haunting (in both senses) and proof that teen flicks don't need to be predictable.

O'Horten
Norway (24 April)
If you saw Kitchen Stories, you will be familiar with Norwegian director Bent Hamer's deadpan comic style. This story of a train driver on the verge of retirement has just the right mix of sentimentality and surrealism (a trip through town with an elderly blindfolded driver and his dog is a potential anthology piece). While the result may be chuckles rather than guffaws, the ghost of Buster Keaton is probably among those chuckling. (Source: The best art house films for 2009 by Nick Roddick)