festival summary

favourites: films that I'd love to own on DVD

Dans la ville de Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-Dong)
Le Voyage du ballon rouge (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
4 Month, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
Ploy (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang)
The Man From London (Béla Tarr)

standouts: films that leave favorable impressions but do not inspire an eagerness to revisit

Ne touchez pas la hache (Jacques Rivette)
I Just Didn't Do It (Suo Masayuki)
Operation Filmmaker (Nina Davenport)
10 + 4 (Mania Akbari)
Beaufort (Joseph Cedar)
Alice's House (Chico Teixeira)
Cochochi (Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán)

worthy experiences: films that I appreciate but have no intention to watch again

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara)
Terror's Advocate (Barbet Schroeder)
You, the Living (Roy Andersson)
Import Export (Ulrich Seidl)
Lust, Caution (Lee Ang)
La France (Serge Bozon)
Useless (Jia Zhangke)
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (Jason Kohn)
Profit motive and the whispering wind (John Gianvito)
Schindler's Houses (Heinz Emigholz)

barely tolerable: these are the uneven films that carry formal or narrative interest but are marred by serious flaws and directorial mishaps

In Memory of Myself (Saverio Costanzo)
Night Train (Diao Yi'nan)
Times and Winds (Reha Erdem)

disappointments and abominations

Une vieille maîtresse (Catherine Breillat)
Redacted (Brian de Palma)
Glory to the Filmmaker! (Kitano Takeshi)
The Voyeurs (Buddhadeb Dasgupta)

walkouts

Atonement (Joe Wright)
The Elephant and the Sea (Woo Ming Jin)
Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (Wang Bing)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)
Soo (Sai Yoichi)