Free Library Film Fest Features Foreign Flicks

The Polish actor Boguslaw Linda plays Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a Russian-born avant-garde painter who opposed Stalinism in Poland, in “Afterimage,” the last film made by the noted Polish director Andrzej Wajda before his death.

East Hampton Library Winter Film Festival will present free showings of six foreign films

Jan. 9, 2018

Jamie Bufalino

An Oscar-winning epic, a teenage odyssey, and a series of power struggles will play out on screen during this year’s East Hampton Library Winter Film Festival, which presents free showings of six foreign films starting on Sunday at 2 p.m. with the Colombian feature “Bad Lucky Goat.” Curated by the head of adult reference, Steven Spataro, the festival will continue on Sunday afternoons through the end of February. All films will be presented with English subtitles.

Released in 2017, “Bad Lucky Goat” is set on an island in the Colombian Caribbean, where two teenage siblings inadvertently kill a goat while driving their father’s truck. The accident sends the duo on a comedic quest to get the truck repaired in time to pick up tourists arriving for a stay at their family’s hotel.

“Afterimage,” the last work from the late Polish director Andrzej Wajda, is a 2017 biopic that focuses on the life of the Russian-born, avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who lost both an arm and a leg fighting in the tsar’s army during World War I, but would later battle the rise of Stalinism in Poland. It will be shown on Jan. 21.

Set in 1983, “The Teacher,” screened on Jan. 28, is a 2016 Czech satire about a middle school teacher who uses her power over her pupils’ grades to extract favors from their parents. Because the teacher is a ranking member of the Communist Party, the parents must make a choice: accept the injustice in order to appease the powers that be, or take a stand and risk reprisal.

The 2016 Bulgarian film “Glory” is next up on Feb. 11. It tells the story of a railroad worker who finds a pile of cash on the tracks and alerts the police rather than pocketing it. The hero’s good deed gets him entangled with the corrupt Ministry of Transportation, which sets off a series of mishaps including the loss of his prized possession — a Russian watch (the brand name Slava translates to “glory”) given to him by his father.

The 1966 Mexican film “Time to Die” — whose screenplay was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez — is a classic tale of revenge. After serving a sentence for killing a man in a duel, Juan Sayago heads back to his hometown, hoping to live a quiet life. The sons of the man he killed, however, have been awaiting retribution. A “High Noon”-style showdown ensues. This one will be shown on Feb. 18.

The festival concludes on Feb. 25 with “Pelle the Conqueror,” a sweeping turn-of-the-20th-century drama starring Max von Sydow as a farmhand (and recent widower) who brings his son, Pelle, from Sweden to Denmark in search of a better life only to find a new world of hardships to overcome. The Danish-Swedish co-production was the winner of the 1989 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.