Movie recommendations

We asked our teams to vote for their favourite movie in their own language and here are our French, Spanish and Russian nominations.

France

Le Peril Jeune (1994)

Director Cedric Klapisch
This film is based in 1968 Paris where a group of young adolescents try to complete their secondary school exams while an unprecedented student revolution is raging outside. This film is profound and wide-ranging as it deals with an important turn in French history as well as other crucial themes such as friendship, drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. Klapisch's lighthearted and playful style brings great entertainment value to this film, which can be said to portray a level of optimism which French films often ignore.

Spain

Muerte de un ciclista (1955) (Death of a Cyclist)

Director: Juan Antonio Bardem
Muerte de un ciclista begins as a domestic drama as a car speeding down a windswept, deserted highway hits a man on a bicycle. After stopping and confirming that the victim is still alive, the couple in the car speed away, leaving the stricken man on the road. We subsequently learn that Juan, the passenger in the car, is a university professor and the female driver is the wife of a wealthy businessman. Afraid that the accident will reveal their adulterous affair, they choose to let the cyclist die. This leads the protagonist, a former soldier on the Falange side, to re-examine his life and realise the compromises that he has made and the ideals that he has sacrificed. Juan is both an individual and a representative of a social class and a specific generation. He stands in sharp contrast to the university students whom he teaches. These students, like the real students in Madrid in the 1950s, hold demonstrations and denounce what they perceive to be injustices in the system. By alternating scenes between the university students and the upper-class world of the lovers, Bardem expands the focus of his story and explores the social and political dimensions of the protagonists' actions. Although the ending of the film remains ambiguous (because of conditions imposed by the censor, some would argue), Bardem's viewpoint is clear. Muerte de un ciclista is a parable on the selfishness of the ruling classes, a meditation on the impact of Spain's past upon the present, and an expression of Bardem's fervent hope that the future will be different.

From Russia

Vozvrashcheniye (2003) (The Return)

Director: Andrei Zyyagintseva
A father returns to an isolated home from a mysterious absence. His two sons barely remember him, while his wife treats his return more with stoicism than any happiness or relief. He takes the boys on a trip, ostensibly to do some fishing, but actually in pursuit of some quest of his own, to do, we assume, with events before he left. The story concerns his attempt to rebuild a relationship with his two boys in the course of the trip. They react very differently: the older son takes him at face value and accepts him, but the younger son is suspicious and rebels against the father's attempts at forming a bond and at imposing his idea of discipline. It plays out against beautifully shot scenes from the Russian countryside, and the eventual climax, though in some ways predictable, is very powerful. Much of the background to the events we see remains hazy, and we are left to form our own conclusions as to the reasons for the father's absence.

This film brilliantly conveys the ambivalence of the boys' feelings towards their returning father, and the acting, particularly of the younger boy, is superb. The edgy nature of the relationship between them as they take their trip comes across in a very immediate way. Above all you find yourself deeply engaged by the question of why the father went away, and why he behaves as he does when he returns.