J.B. Spins

Isolated and picturesque, the Lebanese village of Taybeh offered the perfect locations for the country’s official submission for this year’s...

When a South Korean officer is killed with one of his troops’ weapons, someone has to investigate. It is also a convenient way to move a tro...

As a well educated, comparatively liberal Iranian woman, Simin wants to live abroad, not so much for herself, but for her daughter Termeh. U...

The last recorded use of the stocks as a form of corporal punishment occurred in late nineteenth century Wales (thank you Alan Ayckbourn for...

The tiny Sicilian island of Linosa looks like a Mediterranean paradise. Unfortunately, regular work can only be found there two months out t...

In 1930, Yugoslavia’s national football (a.k.a. soccer) team had quite a run during the very first FIFA World Cup. If you think Serbia still...

In addition to mundane benefits administration and payroll management, HR managers do a bit of PR flackery in Israel. They also have to worr...

Whether from Hollywood or Spain, movie people can be counted on for hypocrisy and pretension. The indigenous population of Bolivia immediate...

Sosa is an attorney. Luján is a doctor. Together they should be one of Buenos Aires’ leading power couples. Instead, they are exploited by a...

Like many Turkish immigrants, Umay came to Germany in search of a better life for herself and her young son Cem. In their case, that meant g...

For nearly twenty years, Latvian director Maris Martinsons lived in Lithuania, which submitted his first film Loss as the country’s 2008 of...

Like most Icelanders these days, this director is going broke. After his last film about “old people wandering around in the rain and fog” b...

Under the Communist regime, incarceration in Romania used to be a brutal, hopeless proposition. Prison is still prison for one youthful offe...

It is a New Year—a time for new beginnings. Hopefully that will be especially true in Afghanistan. One new film vividly represents such aspi...

He is a Spanish ghost whisperer. It is not a scam, Uxbal really believes he can sometimes reach the very recently deceased. Unfortunately, h...

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was not simply a tragedy—it was a scandal. Average citizens were appalled by the government’s ineffectual respon...

The Taliban are not what you would call big movie buffs. Of course, anything involving free expression is pretty much a non-starter for them...

In Cabo Blanco, the villagers’ lives are intertwined with the ocean. Most definitely Catholic, they have developed their own traditions, inc...

Everybody despises collaborators and informers, but what of the secret policemen who press them into betrayal? That is just one of the diffi...

Forces from the Mainland have their eyes on Formosa territory. It is a familiar story, but in this case it is the Chinese syndicate looking ...