Golden Globe Awards 2008 Best Foreign-Language movie nominees are the Romanian film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days;” Taiwan’s “Lust, Caution;” French animated film “Persepolis;” a U.S.-made entry about Afghanistan, “The Kite Runner,” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” a U.S.-French production.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days happens during the course of one day in 1987 in Communist Romania, Otilia helps her friend and roommate Gabita to get a late-term abortion done (at that time, any sort of abortion, as well as any kind of contraceptive were illegal in Romania). The film is very realistic and shows the rough and gritty situation in which the girls, particularly Otilia, must make decisions and deal with their consequences. Not for the faint of heart
Lust, Caution is a new film from Ang Lee, the Academy Award-winning director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A startling erotic espionage thriller about the fate of an ordinary womans heart, it is based on the short story by revered Chinese author Eileen Chang, and stars Asian cinema icon Tony Leung opposite screen newcomer Tang Wei.
Perseplis is the story of Marjane Satrapi grewing up wearing sneakers and beating up boys. She wanted to
grow up to be a saint. When she was ten years old, her world changed overnight. Girls and boys had to use different doors to enter the school. She had to cover herself with a long dark robe. Grownups around her began to disappear. Marjane has several close encounters with the country’s morality police and her teachers at school. Iraqi bombs fall on the street where she lives. Eventually her parents send her abroad to receive a European education, but she is miserable: she loves her family and country, despite their flaws, too much to stay away for long. After a brief return and a failed marriage, Marjane leaves Iran for good.
This is a heartbreaking true story of a childhood coinciding with regime change and war in Iran. It’s a story that everyone who counts themselves as a human being should read or watch.
The Kite Runner is story of an Afghani man, now living in America, returns to Afghanistan to find a child. In doing so, he hopes to find forgiveness for choices he made when he was young. However, the Afghanistan he returns to is now controlled by the Taliban, and finding the child becomes a rescue mission.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him in a life-altered state. While the physical challenges of Bauby’s fate leave him with little hope for the future, he begins to discover how his life’s passions, his rich memories and his newfound imagination can help him achieve a life without boundaries.