Ingeborga Dapkunaite Movies
- 2008
The Russian word morfiy translates as morphine, and that baleful drug with the power of seduction stands at the center of this period drama. Set in 1916, it tells of a young provincial physician, Dr. Mikhail Poliakov, who finds himself drawn into the trap of morphine addiction. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leonid Bichevin, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, (more)
- 2004
One man finds himself pulled in three directions at once by his family and a chance acquaintance in this breakneck comedy. Miguel (Jacques Gamblin) is a single parent and Spanish expatriate living in Belgium who has to deal with a young daughter, Laura (Raphaelle Molinier), his busybody mother, Abuelita (Carmen Maura), and his pushy brother, Juan (Pedro Romero). Miguel works for Juan's travel agency as a courier and errand boy. Shortly after sending Laura off to school, Juan gets an urgent call from Miguel and he has to head to the airport. En route, Miguel gets caught in a traffic jam and encounters Sonia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), an illegal alien from the Ukraine who is on the run from police after being freed from custody by a group of activists. Sonia has been searching for her boyfriend who disappeared in Belgium a year ago, and after much haranguing Miguel agrees to help her, but that's before he gets word from Abuelita that an accident has sent his daughter to the hospital. Fortunately Laura's injuries are minor, but once Laura and Abuelita hear Sonia's story, they decide to drop everything to help her find her man with Miguel along for the ride, regardless of Juan's feelings about the matter (or Miguel's, for that matter). 25 Degres en Hiver was the first feature film from writer and director Stéphane Vuillet. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carmen Maura, Jacques Gamblin, (more)
- 2003
They say clothes make the man, but three young men discover that isn't as true as they might hope in this bittersweet comedy drama. Peaky (Alexander Yatsenko), Dumbo (Ivan Kokorin), and Geka (Artur Povolotsky) are three teenagers who've come of age in a small town on the shores of the Black Sea dominated by merchant shipping. In a village with little in the way of glamour and excitement, a symbol of both hangs in the window of a local clothing shop -- a brand new Gucci suit, which all three boys wish was theirs. Even though Peaky, Dumbo, and Geka are all short on money, they're long on resourcefulness, and after a few less-than-legal money-making schemes, the guys are able to pool enough money to collectively buy the suit. All three are given a boost of confidence by their new threads, but they also find that confidence doesn't help make things go your way, as Peaky and Geka both try to persuade their long-estranged parents to reunite, and Dumbo attempts to persuade his girlfriend that he'll do nearly anything to hold on to her. Shik was screened as part of the "Panorama" series at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alexander Yatsenko, Artur Povolotsky, (more)
- 2002
Chechen guerilla leader Aslan (Georgi Gurgulia) holds captive two touring actors, John (Ian Kelly) and his fiancée, Margaret (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), along with an injured Russian Captain Medvedev (Sergei Bodrov Jr.) and his sergeant, Ivan (Alexei Chadov). Aslan sets John free to return to Britain and Ivan free to return to Russia; however, he informs John that he must raise ransom money or else Margaret will be gang-raped and killed. John tries frantically to raise the necessary funds, but can only get a fraction of what he needs; meanwhile, he agrees to document his life with a digital camera to make more money. He contacts Ivan for help and they cross the Caucasus and return to Chechnya with a mission to rescue Margaret and Captain Medvedev. ~ Todd Kristel, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Aleksei Chadov, Ian Kelly, (more)
- 2000
This contemporary look at life in Russia's capital opens with hard-drinking night club owner Irina (Natalia Koliakanova) celebrating the engagement of her daughter Masha (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) to Mike (Alexander Baluev), a businessman gangster and ballet patron. Irina's youngest daughter Olga (Tatiana Drubich) sings atonal songs for the affluent customers of her mother's Western-style club, who are unaware of Olga's past hospitalization for mental problems. Irina busies herself with a psychotherapist (Viktor Gvozditsky), but also takes a fancy to Mike; when Masha catches her fiancé in a clinch with her mother, she merely shrugs it off and becomes besotted with Lev (Stanislav Pavlov), Mike's drug runner. Lev also becomes the object of Olga's affection and treats his admirer to a round of subway sex. Dysfunction, kinky couplings, and gangland-style revenge abound. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Tatyana Drubich, (more)
- 1999
A group of Irish college students are about to leave for the United States, where they've landed summer jobs in Long Island, when a slightly shady friend of one of the gang, Davin (Cillian Murphy), decides to tag along as a quick way out of a doomed romance. While the students all have jobs and working papers lined up, Davin is an illegal alien in the States. But he leads a charmed life, and manages to get by quite nicely, even finding an American sweetheart, a cab dispatcher named Aideen (Paloma Baeza). Robert (Barry Ward), meanwhile, gets more from his job than he expected when he serves as a houseboy for a well-to-do artist named Carolyn (Ingeborga Dapkunaite). The rest of the group works hard in the day and plays even harder at night, as they relish the opportunity to enjoy adult life far from the eyes of their families. Sunburn marked the feature debut for director Nelson Hume; it was produced by Jean Doumanian, who produced a number of films for Woody Allen and briefly produced the TV series Saturday Night Live. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cillian Murphy, Paloma Baeza, (more)
- 1995
Anna and her father fled Estonia during WW II and moved to England. At the time, she believed that her mother was dead. In 1989, Anna's father dies and shortly thereafter she finds a bunch of old photographs and letters. Reading them, she begins to reassemble a clearer picture of her long-forgotten past as well as that of her father, who rarely spoke of himself. Most disturbingly, she believes that she has found evidence that her mother (whose story unfolds via flashback) may have survived. This drama chronicles Anna's return to tumultuous Estonia to learn the truth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
A wife finds her life transformed after a torrid affair in this story of murder. Katia is a rather dull young woman who types manuscripts for Irina, her husband's mother and successful writer of romance novels. Katia's husband is a real momma's boy. They go to Irina's summer house to work. There Katia encounters the intense and sexy Serguei who creates passionate longings with in her. Overcome she and Serguei engage in vigorous love-making upon a windowsill where Irina sees them. Irina has a weak heart. Quiet Katia, having rediscovered the joys of sex, changes and becomes more assertive and flighty. Serguei quickly loses interest in her. Strange and deadly things begin happening at the summer house which calls the attention of a judge who is extremely familiar with Irina's writing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Alisa Freyndlikh, (more)
- 1991
By 1922, the bloom was off the rose of the Bolshevik Revolution, and people were adjusting to food and housing shortages and ever-increasing poverty. In a symbolically parallel development, a young man has optimistically married an extremely beautiful woman, filled with dreams of happily-ever-after. Instead, she almost immediately beds his best friend and then becomes a high-class prostitute while he looks on helplessly. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Andrei Ilyin, (more)
- 1989
Tatyana (Yelena Yakovleva) works as a nurse in a hospital in Leningrad. However, she has wants that her salary cannot provide for her, and sometimes she earns some hard currency by sleeping with foreign tourists. One of these is an uninspiring Swedish man, who offers to marry her. She is tempted, because she believes that the material aspect of life in Sweden is infinitely superior to that in Russia. Overcoming the resistence of the bureaucracy to her marriage, she succeeds in moving to Sweden with her new husband. Alas, she is soon bored with her new existence, and returns to her old hooking habits. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yelena Yakovleva, Tomas Laustiola, (more)
Curious filmgoers looking to get better acquainted with the silver screen's most notorious cannibalistic serial killer are sure to get their fair share of shocks and thrills as director Peter Webber teams with author Thomas Harris to explore the early life of well-read psychopath Hannibal Lecter. Based on author Harris' gruesome novel of the same name, Hannibal Rising travels back in time to World War II-era Lithuania, where an impressionable, well-to-do young boy named Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel) was forced to watch helplessly as his family was massacred and his young sister suffered a terrifying fate at the hands of desperate, famished soldiers. After seeking temporary shelter at the Soviet orphanage that was once his family's home, Hannibal later flees to Paris in search of his long-lost uncle. Though his uncle has passed away, his uncle's beautiful Japanese widow, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), warmly accepts the frightened orphan into her home. But even the love and kindness of this generous stranger isn't enough to calm the raging storm that is brewing inside this troubled young boy. Plagued by nightmares and determined to seek vengeance on the murderous war criminals who brutalized his family, the profoundly disturbed but academically gifted Hannibal enrolls in medical school in order to hone the skills that will allow him to exact horrific justice. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, (more)
Stalinist Russia, circa 1930, is recreated in this Russian-French film that focuses on a small, elite gathering of family and friends who appreciate the idealism of Stalin's visions because they do not have to experience its darker side of gulags and purges. The story focuses upon a single day in Soviet revolutionary hero Serguei Kotov's life. Kotov lives an idyllic country life with his lovely wife Maroussia, and their feisty daughter Nadia. He is highly respected by the locals. On this day, the Kotovs are visited by the roguishly handsome Dimitri, who was a former lover of Maroussia. Dimitri is on a dark mission that may have profound effects on Kotov's peaceful, happy, and idealistic existence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nikita Mikhalkov, Oleg Menshikov, (more)
Typically impressive natural vistas from director Jean-Jacques Annaud (some secretly filmed on location in Tibet) highlight this adaptation of the memoir by Heinrich Harrer. Brad Pitt stars as the arrogant Heinrich, a famed Austrian mountain climber who leaves behind his wife and infant son to head a Himalayan expedition in 1939, only to fall into the hands of Allied forces as a prisoner of war. He and a fellow escapee, Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis), make their way to the Forbidden City in Tibet, where Peter finds a wife and Heinrich befriends the Western culture-obsessed teenage Dalai Lama (Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk), the spiritual leader of his Buddhist nation. As Heinrich waits out the war, his friendship with the Dalai Lama begins to transform him from haughty to humble, but a crisis with China looms. A controversy over the revelation of the real-life Harrer's Nazi Party affiliation brewed during the film's production, forcing Annaud to briefly deal with the subject in the film. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, (more)
After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma's big-budget adaptation shares little more with the original show than the occasional self-destructing message and the name of team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The film focuses not on Phelps but his protégé, Ethan Hunt (a reserved Tom Cruise), who becomes a fugitive after taking the blame for a botched operation. He responds by banding together with a group of fellow renegades, and he is soon maneuvering his way through a twisted series of double crosses that mainly serve as excuses for spectacular high-tech action sequences. Much of the activity revolves around a missing computer disk, with the film's most famous scene depicting Hunt's delicate efforts to retrieve the disk from a secure, well-alarmed room in CIA headquarters. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, (more)
