Boatman
Cinema Italiano! • 55m
Gianfranco Rosi • Italy • 1993
The Ganges River is one of India’s most sacred waterways, providing drinking water to the nation’s populace and irrigating fields of grain and vegetables. A source of renewal, it is also the final resting place for many, whose remains are burned on funeral pyres then sent downstream. A lone boatman floats, too, down the river, encountering tourists and Indians alike, sharing in their stories, joys and sorrows with calm detachment.
An immersive, meandering portrait of life and death on the Ganges, Boatman gains accumulative power from simple human interactions and the placidity of its unassuming protagonist. Celebrated filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi's first film premiered at Sundance, IDFA - Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, and Vienna.
Up Next in Cinema Italiano!
-
Below Sea Level
Gianfranco Rosi • Italy • 2008 • A portrait of California flatland squatters
.
Roughly 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles, in the wild desert of Southern California, is an ad hoc town without electricity or running water. Some denizens are just passing through, others are here to stay. While ... -
Caesar Must Die
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani • 2012 • Italy
A director stages a prison performance of Julius Caesar.
Inside the high-security wing of Rome's Rebibbia Prison, a theater director seeks to stage a performance of ...
-
Dormant Beauty
Marco Bellocchio • Italy • 2012
Eluana Englaro has laid in a hospital bed in Udine for seventeen years. With no hope of emerging from her vegetative state, Eluana’s father would like to remove her feeding tube...
