"Respect for life and human rights are  very important and I make movies addressing these issues because it is important for people as well as governments, not to repeat the errors of the past." Thus spake Francisco Manso, director of ‘The Consul of Bordeaux’ the 42nd IFFI's opening film which played to full houses at repeat screenings. Addressing  a crowded media meet at the Maquinez Palace on his birthday (the Lisbon born director turned 62 on November 28)  Man...

Lourdes (Dir Jessica Hausner 2009 Austria) Jessica Hausner's new film Lourdes may be the most mysterious film screened at this year's Tallinn film festival, one that takes a story of religious and spiritual import and casts that world and those themes down a gauntlet that suggests Hitchcock and Tati in its supremely calibrated conceptual suspense and encircling humor.  The story finds a wheelchair-bound Sylvie Testud, whose character is suffering from multiple-sclerosis, traveling...