Set on a river*

Jean: Are you bored? Juliette: Oh, no. Jean: Don't worry. There'll be places to see. Juliette: Riverbanks.

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

Perumthitta Tharavad: based on a folk tale.

“I regard [Govindan] Aravindan as one of the most poetic filmmakers in the world. He is a poet who writes in the language of cinema and silence. Watching his films is like a meditative experience.”

– Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Film Heritage Foundation (source)

Set during the Hindu rice harvest festival Onam, Kummatty tells the story of the seasons through the eyes of a mischievous boy. After teasing the temple guard – possibly Thamma – she warns the boy and his friends about the arrival of Kummatti (here unfortunately translated as the bogeyman but actually the name of a performer of a mask dance called Kummatti Kali). As faith wants it, Kummatti does arrive and accompanies the children in song and dance while the seasons change, rice is ready for harvest, and characters shift. To a certain extent, there's an interesting parallel with Frank Perry's Ladybug Ladybug (1963).

Saint Lucy's Day: wearing a garland. Today's and yesterday's theme are virtually interchangeable.

“Kneel before her son. I've had a dream. She's the incarnation of the Goddess, Kali.”

– Kalikinkar Roy

Doyamoyee's father-in-law, and worshipper of Kali, has a dream. The young woman is the goddess' avatar. Locals come to visit the house, and Doyamoyee too starts believing in her divinity.

Candles for Diwali*. Today's and tomorrow's theme are virtually interchangeable.

“I have been insatiably drawn to termite and white-elephant art my entire movie-going life. ...white-elephant movies exist outside the bounds of rational criticism as immense and spectacular monuments to their director’s monstrous genius, ego and hubris. Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon is such an animal, a multi-level Rocky Horror Picture Show set during a 1659 performance of a fifteenth century morality play, in which our perceptions of spectatorship, identity and construction are unsympathetically challenged and the fourth wall between “real” and “make-believe” continually assaulted. The beauty of the ravishing cinematography, deluxe production design, and a script that suggests the movie is merely “a play with music,” are abrasively juxtaposed with graphic depictions of unspeakably cruel atrocities. Everything and everyone is incriminated in this challenging, ritualistic, and agnostic essay on the Nativity”

– filmmaker Andrew Repasky McElhinney, 2002 (via)

When an old crone gives birth to a beautiful baby, a young virgin claims the child as hers. With the Immaculately Conceived wonder put on display – to the child's contemporaries, the court of Cosimo de' Medici attending a reenactment of the events, and us film viewers – He protects the false Virgin from losing her chastity and blurs the walls between staging and gospel.

 

* “Diwali, one of the major religious festivals in Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, lasting for five days from the 13th day of the dark half of the lunar month Ashvina to the second day of the light half of the lunar month Karttika. The corresponding dates in the Gregorian calendar usually fall in late October and November.” (source).

Set in the mountains for International Mountain Day

 

1943. With the family preparing for Christmas, old man Temnikar hears the sound of a trumpet. The patriarch sees it as his calling to follow – and kill – the White Guardists who visited his mountain farm looking for wounded Partisans.

Celebrating human rights on Human Rights Day: the right to work

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

– Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations General Assembly

A Mauritanian immigrant (Robert Liensol) too starts anew in Paris. But first, he'll need a job.

On a cruise, from [OP] Cinn’s bucket list. Well, not in the context of today's film pick*

 

1960. On a luxury line, former prisoner Marta and her warden Liza meet again. Things had happened years before, in Auschwitz. This new confrontation reverses their roles.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

Lights on water for the final day of Féte des Lumiéres, 2025

“In Sicily, Italian is not the language of the poor.”

– title card