The Great Match

Directors: Gerardo Olivares
Starring: Atibou Aboubacar
Year: 2006

Three interspersed stories of people in remote parts of Mongolia, Niger and Brazil struggling to get TV reception of the 2002 World Cup final between Germany and Brazil

Comments: Very amusing

Recommended.

Jellyfish (Meduzot)

Directors: Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret
Starring: Sara Adler, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller, Asi Dayan
Year: 2007

Meduzot (the Hebrew word for Jellyfish) tells the story of three very different Israeli women living in Tel Aviv whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a young child apparently abandoned at a local beach. Batya is one of the servers at the wedding reception of Keren, a young bride who breaks her leg at her own wedding, which ruins her chance at a romantic honeymoon in the Caribbean. One of the guests is Joy, a Philippine woman who works as a private caretaker for the elderly, and who is guilt-ridden after having left her young son behind in the Philippines.

Comments: Skillfully and sensitively weaves through the complexity modern Tel Aviv life

Recommended.

Nanook of the North

Director: Robert Flaherty
Starring: Allakariallak (as Nanook)
Year: 1922

Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit) and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.

Comments: Conveys as sense of wonder with the Arctic north. After 87 years, this holds up surprisingly well from a cinematography and story-telling standpoint

Recommended.