Top 5 Movies You Didn't See Here

by Cindy Fuchs

GRAND OL' FLAG: Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's How to Fold a Flag is one of several strong films that were not released theatrically in Philadelphia.

How to Fold a Flag | Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's film revisits the soldiers featured in their 2004 documentary, Gunner Palace, with an eye to how they are coping with war's aftermath. Whether cage-fighting or running for office, angry or insistently idealistic, the men all seek to express what they've experienced.

October Country | A lovely, lyrical meditation on family ghosts and the implacable effects of the past on the present. It uses mid-autumn's stark poetry to suggest the family's haunting by ghosts, from wartime traumas and domestic abuses.

24 City | In this wonderfully deliberate movie, Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke looks at another sort of family fabric than October Country, in the form of histories recalled over three generations of workers in a state-owned factory, now closing to make room for an apartment complex in Chengdu.

Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders | Mark Hopkins' documentary looks at the efforts of Médecins Sans Frontières. The film doesn't smooth over what goes wrong and leaves unresolved the stories of its doctor subjects. Such messy narrative structure exemplifies the disorder and difficulty of each day.

Back Home, Tomorrow | Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Paolo Santolini's beautifully made film alternates between two stories of children in need of care. Each is framed by the work of Italian aid organization Emergency. While the children's struggles are compelling, the doc's immersion in their perspectives is inspired. The movie grants insight into troubles that no child should have to endure.