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Shake Hands with the Devil
Based on Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire?s memoirs by the same name, Shake Hands with the Devil is a riveting character study as well as a crucial rendering of Canada?s recent political history and Dallaire?s harrowing experiences in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. In his most memorable role to date, Quebec superstar Roy Dupuis (The Rocket, That Beautiful Somewhere) virtually transforms into Dallaire, who, upon his return to Canada after the genocide, began intensive therapy sessions. As Dallaire attempts to work through his trauma, the story begins to unfold in extended flashbacks.
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At the age of four, Marla Olmstead became an art-world sensation when in 2004 a gallery in Binghamton, New York, devoted a solo show to her paintings. Soon collectors were lauding her talent and paying thousands for a canvas. Was this a genuine prodigy or just a pawn of a manipulative market? This is the key question driving Amir Bar-Lev?s utterly compelling documentary. My Kid Could Paint That uses a simple story to explore complex questions about art, media and family, and to ask: What defines the value of a painting? The value of news? The value of friendship? 
Director Laurie Lynd?s latest feature film, the endearing Breakfast with Scot, has entered into the record books as the first film about a homosexual couple that is endorsed by both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the National Hockey League. Sam and Ed aren?t exactly your stereotypical gay couple. A former pro-hockey player, Sam now works as a broadcaster for a major sports network, and is determined to keep his personal life private. Things change irrevocably when Ed?s odd and very precocious nephew, Scot comes to live with the couple. Though loaded with charm, tolerance and acceptance, Breakfast with Scot also reminds us that our world isn?t yet as accepting of differences or safe as we might like to believe. 
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, winner of the best director prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, is a beautiful adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby?s revealing memoir. Once a successful editor and womanizer, Bauby is paralysed by a massive stroke that leaves him powerless to move except for his left eyelid. Bauby?s nurses develop an ingenious method of communication, through which he is able to preserve his final link to the outside world ? the winking butterfly that frees him from the diving bell of his broken body. 
Nadine Labaki?s directorial debut manages to stir the senses and emotions in this enchanting story, set in and around a Beirut beauty parlour. The ensemble cast shows raw charisma, giving the film an almost improvisatory quality. Caramel chooses to look past the war and politics in Beirut to the eternal truths of love and passion, reminding us of our sisters, mothers and girlfriends by embodying grace and strength simultaneously. Although we may not have lived these characters' lives, we know their struggles all too well. Each scene is carefully crafted so as to allow the audience to experience each moment of their pain, joy and sorrow. 
Ian McEwan?s novel Atonement has been brought to the screen by director Joe Wright and playwright Christopher Hampton. Atonement begins in an English manor house in 1935 and spans several decades capturing its characters at different points in their lives, telling McEwan?s extraordinary story of a young girl?s indiscretion, which rips apart many lives and scars her own. As the girl becomes a woman, she continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love. 
This vividly textured portrait of contemporary India by first-time director Richie Mehta. Tells of Amal, a poor rickshaw driver does an old and seemingly homeless man a good turn. Later he chases a pick-pocket through the chaotic streets of New Delhi. These two innocent acts set forth a series of events that entwine the characters in each others lives. Amal?s life-affirming story evokes lingering vestiges of the caste system, wherein, at the end of his life, a rich man holds up a mirror to the world he inhabited as a tycoon but departed as an ascetic to reveal that we are defined as much by what we sacrifice as we are by what we possess. 
The Band's Visit is an inspiring story of cross-cultural reconciliation set in the most unlikely of locales. In director Eran Kolirin?s debut feature, a small, uniformed Egyptian police band gets lost in rural Israel. The tone of this comedic tale is infused with a wistful nostalgia for the director?s childhood, when Egyptian movies and the Israel Broadcasting Authority?s orchestra performances were shown side by side on Israeli television. While refusing to glorify the past, Kolirin clearly yearns for a less mediated time when simpler pleasures a shared meal, a good tune, an open door had the potential to bring people together.