Becky Dornon sent the following to us via email, and we thought the rest of you would be interested. If you have any reflections, suggestions, or ideas to share, don't hestatite to drop us an email, or register with the site and post them here yourself.
~Marjorie
The literal translation of the Japanese title given this movie, Okuribito, is something like Those Who Send Off or The Sender Offers, so I understand the American distributing studio went with the travel agent lingo and chose "Departures."
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Showtime: Saturday, January 16, 2010, 2:00pm
 Director: Yojiro Takita
Original Title: Okuribito
Country: Japan
Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved, is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an...
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Showtime: Sunday, January 17, 2010, 3:00pm
 Director: Andrea Staka
Original Title: Das Fräulein
Country: Germany
Ruža left Belgrade more than 25 years ago to seek a new life in Zurich. Now in her fifties, she has completely detached herself from the past. She owns a cafeteria and maintains an orderly, joyless existence. Mila, a waitress there, is a good-humored Croatian woman who also emigrated decades...
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Showtime: Sunday, January 17, 2010, 7:00pm
 Director: Yoji Yamada
Country: Japan
Veteran Japanese filmmaker Yoji Yamada's 80th feature film concerns a mother living in 1940s-era Tokyo who is forced to care for her two daughters alone after her husband is jailed for expressing reformist views on the Japanese invasion of China. Professor Shigeru Nogami (Mitsugoro Bando) is an outspoken man with some particularly...
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Showtime: Monday, January 18, 2010, 2:00pm
 Director: Eran Riklis
Original Title: Etz Limon
Country: Israel
Salma, a Palestinian widow - living there for decades - , has to stand up against her new neighbor, the Israeli Defense Minister, when he moves into his new house opposite her lemon grove, on the green line border between Israel and the West Bank. The Israeli security forces are quick to declare...
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Showtime: Saturday, January 16, 2010, 10:00am
 Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Country: Rwanda
After stealing a machete from a market in Kigali, Munyurangabo and his friend, Sangwa, leave the city on a journey tied to their pasts. Munyurangabo wants justice for his parents who were killed in the genocide, and Sangwa wants to visit the home he deserted years ago. Though they plan to visit Sangwa's home for just a few hours,...
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Showtime: Monday, January 18, 2010, 7:00pm
 Director: Maria Govan
Country: Bahamas
Rain is a spirited fourteen-year old who, after the death of her grandmother (Irma P. Hall), forgoes the sheltered, simple life of her home on Ragged Island to seek out her estranged mother in the big city of Nassau. Her dreams of a loving reconciliation are quickly shattered when she meets Glory (Nicki Micheaux), a scarred, proud, guarded woman bearing...
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Showtime: Monday, January 18, 2010, 10:00am
 Director: Mehreen Jabbar
Country: Pakistan
Ramchand Pakistani is derived from a true story concerning the accidental crossing of the Pakistan-Indian border during a period (June 2002) of extreme, war-like tension between the two countries by two members of a Pakistani Hindu family belonging to the 'untouchable' (Dalit) caste, and the extraordinary consequences of...
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Showtime: Saturday, January 16, 2010, 7:00pm
 Director: Daniel Burman
Original Title: El Nido Vacío
Country: Argentina
This film explores the emptiness experienced when children grow up and leave the family home, suddenly revealing the cracks in a marriage. Leonardo, a successful if somewhat tedious author, behaves like a man on the verge of a middle-age crisis, indulgent towards his neurosis...
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Showtime: Friday, January 15, 2010, 7:30pm
 Directed by: Benoit Pilon
Country: Canada
In 1952, an Inuit hunter named Tivii (Natar Ungalaaq, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner), stricken with tuberculosis, leaves his northern home and family to recuperate in a sanitarium near Quebec City. Uprooted, far from his land and his loved ones, unable to speak French and faced with a...
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Showtime: Sunday, January 17, 2010, 1:00pm
 Director: Carlos Sorín
Original Title: La ventana
Country: Argentina
It is a significant day for 80 year old Antonio. After an absence of many years, his estranged son is coming to visit. All must be perfect. There will be a toast with a very special champagne; an embrace; warm words that may finally bridge the gap between them… But before, Antonio must...
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