Kino Lorber June 2018 Home Video Releases

Defining Hope (Kino Lorber, DVD)
DVD Street Date: June 5, 2018
DVD SRP: $29.95

Documentary / 77 min / NR / Color

Director: Carolyn Jones
Starring: Rudolph Bilotti Sr., Berthold Cohen, Charlotte Cohen

Synopsis: The groundbreaking new documentary Defining Hope, from director Carolyn Jones (The American Nurse), follows eight patients with life-threatening illnesses, and the nurses who guide them to make critical choices along the way as they face death, embrace hope, and ultimately redefine what makes life worth living. It offers a hopeful message about bringing power back to the patient. Defining Hope explores what to do for ourselves and our loved ones as we get closer to the end of life. Through the stories of patients, families, nurses, and healthcare professionals, the conversation around quality end-of-life care is brought to the forefront.

Special Features: Additional Interviews | Additional Scenes | Dying in America Project Trailer | Trailers

DVD Street Date: June 12, 2018
DVD SRP: $29.95

Animatin-Drama / 94 min / NR / Color

Director:  Ali Soozandeh
Starring: Farhad Abadinejad, Jasmina Ali, Rozita Assadollahy

Synopsis: In the gorgeously animated drama Tehran Taboo, the lives of several strong-willed women and a young musician intersect. Their stories reveal the hypocrisies of modern Iranian society, where sex, drugs, and corruption coexist with strict religious law. In the bustling metropolis of Tehran, avoiding prohibitions has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation. Nevertheless, women invariably end up on the bottom rung of the social order. A young woman needs an operation to “restore” her virginity. A judge in the Islamic Revolutionary Court exhorts favors from a prostitute in exchange for a favorable ruling. The wife of an imprisoned drug addict is denied the divorce she needs in order to live independently. Making use of rotoscope animation, expat Iranian filmmaker Ali Soozandeh creates a portrait of contemporary Tehran that would be impossible by any other means.

Special Features: Making-of Documentary | Trailer | The Return of the Dustbunnies (2009), a short animated film by Ali Soozandeh

The Late Great Planet Earth
(Scorpion Releasing, Blu-ray and DVD)
Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: June 12, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $29.95
DVD SRP: $19.95

Documentary/Drama/Biblical / 91 min / PG / Color

Director:  Robert Amram
Starring: Orson Welles, Hal Lindsey, Richard Hale

Synopsis: A Scorpion Releasing Release – The great Orson Welles (The Stranger) narrates and appears in this fascinating but sobering story of the human race and its threatened annihilation. As foretold by Bible prophecies and corroborated by world-renowned modern scientists, this film connects these prophecies with ominous events that are actually happening in our lifetime and boldly contemplates the future that awaits us. Based on the best seller by Hal Lindsey and C.C. Carlson and directed by Robert Amram. Biblical sequences written and directed by Rolf Forsberg.

Special Features: Original Theatrical Trailer

Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: June 19, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $34.95
DVD SRP: $29.95

Comedy/Romance / 93 min / NR / Color

Director: Rachel Israel
Starring: Jessica Walter, Christina Brucato, Johnathan Tchaikovsky

Synopsis: When aspiring filmmaker David (Brandon Polansky) is mandated by a judge to attend a social program at the Jewish Community Center, he is sure of one thing: he doesn’t belong there. But when he’s assigned to visit the Brooklyn Bridge with the vivacious Sarah (Samantha Elisofon), sparks fly and his convictions are tested. Their budding relationship must weather Sarah’s romantic past, David’s judgmental mother (Jessica Walter), and their own preconceptions of what love is supposed to look like.

Special Features: Deleted Scenes | Keep the Change Short Film (2013) | Q&A | Trailer

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (Kino Classics, Blu-ray)
Blu-ray Street Date: June 19, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $29.95

1975 / Drama / 97 min / PG / Color

Director: Denis Héroux
Starring: Elly Stone, Mort Shuman, Joe Masiell, Jacques Brel

Synopsis: A freewheeling adapation of the perennial cabaret-style musical, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is a kaleidoscopic romp through the Brel songbook. Songwriter (and original cast member) Mort Shuman worked with stage producer Eric Blau to transform Brel’s chansons into lushly romantic yet unsentimental English-language tunes. Shuman, Elly Stone and Joe Masiell give voice to Brel’s tangos and boleros in an explosion of settings that are inexhaustively imaginative and intimate. But the true showstopper offers Brel himself singing his signature “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” in a sequence that ranks as one of the most powerfully understated and sincere musical performances ever captured on film.

Special Features: Audio commentary by film historian Bret Wood, with Addison Wood | Interview with Edie Landau | “Ely Landau: In Front of the Camera,” a promotional film for the American Film Theatre | Gallery of trailers for the American Film Theatre

Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: June 19, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $34.95
DVD SRP: $29.95

1974 / Drama/Romance / 94 min / PG / Color

Director: Christopher Miles
Starring: Glenda Jackson, Susannah York, Vivien Merchant

Synopsis: Glenda Jackson (Sunday Bloody Sunday) and Susannah York (The Killing of Sister George) provide a volatile mixture of class confrontation, Freudian passion, and criminal mischief in this unbridled, expertly cinematic rendering of the play by Jean Genet, one of the most creative and provocative minds of the 20th Century. Solange and Claire are Paris maids who tend to the domestic needs of a cruel socialite (Vivien Merchant). Whenever Madame is away, the bonnes obsessively act out complex psychodramas of domination and control that fuel a lust for revenge upon the haughty woman they serve.

Special Features: Interview with director Christopher Miles (29 min.) | Interview with Edie Landau | “Ely Landau: In Front of the Camera,” a promotional film for the American Film Theatre | Gallery of trailers for the American Film Theatre

Blu-ray Street Date: June 26, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $29.95

2003 / Drama/Mystery/Thriller / 110 min / NR / Color

Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Starring: Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov, Konstantin Lavronenko

Synopsis: The Return (2003) is the stunning debut feature of Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan, Loveless), which won the Golden Lion for Best Picture, as well as the Best First Film award, at the Venice Film Festival. Young brothers Andrei (Vladimir Garin) and Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) have grown close in a household their father (Konstantin Lavronenko) abandoned. But when they least expect it, the man the boys have never known returns. Eager and bewildered, Andrei and Ivan join this mysterious stranger for a week-long fishing trip. As they travel deeper into the Russian wilderness, their journey devolves from vacation to boot camp, turning into a violent test of wills. Disturbing, tender and transcendent, The Return’s skillful marriage of psychological complexity and mythic imagery effortlessly evokes the watershed films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Special Features: Interview with director Andrey Zvyagintsev | The Return: A Film About the Film (2004, 63 minutes) | Trailers

The Banishment (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray and DVD)
Blu-ray and Street Date: June 26, 2018
Blu-ray SRP: $29.95
DVD Street Date: $19.95

2007 / Drama / 157 min / NR / Color

Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Starring: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie, Aleksandr Baluev

Synopsis: Andrey Zvyagintsev (Loveless, Leviathan) proffers an ambitious exploration of the human condition in his second feature, The Banishment (2007). Much like his critically acclaimed debut The Return (2003), the film investigates the bonds of family, this time tackling the relationship between a husband and wife. A trip to the pastoral countryside reveals a dark, sinister reality for a family from the city. Eschewing easy answers and tackling a wide array of themes, The Banishment poetically renders the persistent human state of exile from our surroundings. Based on the novel The Laughing Matter by William Saroyan.

Special Features: Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (22 minutes) | Interview with director Andrey Zvyagintsev | Trailers