Antoine Monot, Jr. Movies

One man's dogged search for freedom and a better life leads him on a picaresque journey in this comedy-drama from celebrated filmmaker Costa-Gavras. Elias (Ricardo Scamarcio) is a young man from a nameless country in the Mediterranean who has tossed away his passport and paid a smuggler a handsome fee to be hidden inside a ship making its way to Europe. When immigration authorities stage a surprise inspection, Elias jumps ship along with a number of other unauthorized passengers, and hours later he washed up on the clothes-optional beach of a luxury resort on the Southern coast of France. Wearing tattered clothes amidst folks who wear designer originals when they bother to dress at all, dogged by hunger while guess nibble at lavish open buffets, and presumed to be a laborer by the few guests who pay attention to him, Elias is a stranger in a very strange land as he tries to avoid immigration police and survive in a place where he can't speak the local language. Elias stumbles into a brief affair with Christina (Juliane Köhler), a German tourist looking for kicks, but he fares better when he meets Nick Nickelby (Ulrich Tukur), a traveling magician who gives Elias a job as a temporary assistant and invites him to visit him in Paris. When Nickelby moves on, Elias decides to make his way to the fabled city, which is the beginning of a long and sometimes dangerous journey though class-conscious Europe. Eden à l'ouest (aka Eden Is West) was screened at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival only a few days after its world premiere, appropriately held in Paris. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In the port town of Hamburg, Germany, Floyd (Frank Giering) disappoints his sanctimonious boss by announcing that he's shipping out to South Africa and Singapore now that his two-year probation for an unspecified juvenile offense has been completed. When he shares the news with his devoted friends Chubby (Antoine Monot Jr.), a mechanic, and Ricco (Florian Lukas), a fast-food cook and would-be b-boy, they can't comprehend their thoughtful friend's willingness to trade camaraderie for a wider view of the world. Overcoming their anger and bewilderment, the guys decide to spend one last night with Floyd, but the problem, as always, is how to find some fun. A succession of fast-food restaurants, parking garages, and local watering holes chronicles the inherent boredom of life in the provinces. But a run-in with a convention of dragster-racing Elvis impersonators sends the boys and their friend Telsa Julia Hummer on a series of adventures that veers from the farcical to the almost-tragic. Absolute Giganten was screened at the 1999 Flanders Film Festival and thereafter received limited international distribution. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi