Arrow Academy will release four new titles on Blu-ray: Mohamed Diab's
Clash, Jean Grémillon's
The Love of a Woman, Ermanno Olmi's
The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, and Robert Aldrich's
The Big Knife. The label will also re-release Thomas Vinterberg's film
The Hunt.
Clash
A festival smash, Clash has wowed audiences worldwide and prompted Tom Hanks to write director Mohamed Diab a personal letter congratulating him for his striking film, telling the world at the same time "If there s any way you can see Clash..., you must. You simply must. The film will break your heart, but enlighten all."
Cairo - 2013, two years after the Egyptian revolution, demonstrators of divergent political and religious backgrounds are forcibly detained together in a claustrophobic police truck during the turmoil that erupts following the ousting of former president Morsi from power. The factions quickly divide between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and those backing the military, alongside a pair of neutral journalists and a mother determined to be detained with her son. With all sense of national unity in tatters and the violence on the outside ever-escalating can the prisoners find common ground and stand a chance of survival?
An intense and staggeringly important portrait of Egypt, Clash is all the more powerful for the incredible spectacle captured as the crew faced genuine protestors and riots.
Special Features:
- Original 5.1 audio
- New optional English subtitle translation
- Tales From the Van, a new interview with director Mohamed Diab
- Making-of Featurette
- Trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring alternate artwork
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Michael Brooke. and an Interview with Mohamed Diab.
UK STREET DATE: AUGUST 14.
The Love of a Woman
The Love of a Woman (L'amour d'une femme) was the final feature of the great French filmmaker Jean Grémillon, concluding a string of classics that included such greats as Remorques, Lumiere d'eteand Pattes blanches.
Marie, a young doctor, arrives on the island of Ushant to replace its retiring physician. She experiences prejudice from the mostly male population, but also love in the form of engineer André.
Starring Micheline Presle, whose impressive career has encompassed French, Italian and Hollywood cinema, and Massimo Girotti, best-known for his performance in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, The Love of a Woman is a sad, beautiful, romantic masterpiece.
Special Features:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition presentations of the feature, from materials supplied by Gaumont
- Original French mono audio (uncompressed LPCM on the Blu-ray)
- Optional English subtitles
- In Search of Jean Gremillon, a feature-length documentary on the filmmaker from 1969, containing interviews with director Rene Clair, archivist Henri Langlois, actors Micheline Presle and Pierre Brasseur, and others
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jennifer Dionisio
- First pressing only:Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Ginette Vincendeau
U.S. STREET DATE: AUGUST 22.
UK STREET DATE: AUGUST 21.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of the Wooden Clogs is an epic portrait of peasant life in late nineteenth century Italy.
Focussing on four families working and living on the farm of a landowner in the Bergamo region of northern Italy, Olmi presents a year in their lives, charting their daily activities and the natural flow of existence: birth, marriage, death, and the trials and tribulations in between.
Shot on an abandoned farmhouse in Bergamo, The Tree of Wooden Clogs utilised locals of the region to its characters and had them speak in their Bergamasque dialect. The end results are truly remarkable, the apotheosis of Italian cinema's neo-realism movement.
Special Features:
- Brand-new 4K restoration by The Film Foundation
- Original Bergamasque and Italian mono soundtracks (uncompressed LPCM on the Blu-ray)
- Optional English subtitles
- Introduction by director Ermanno Olmi
- Two interviews with Olmi from the 1978 Cannes Film Festival, recorded either side of its Palme d'Or win
- Interview with Olmi from Italian film programme Appuntamenti con il cinema
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by David Jenkins
UK STREET DATE: AUGUST 7.
The Big Knife
Mere months after delivering one of the definitive examples of film noir with Kiss Me Deadly, Robert Aldrich brought a noir flavour to Hollywood with his classic adaptation of Clifford Odets stage play, The Big Knife.
Charles Castle, one of Hollywood s biggest stars, looks like he has it all. But his marriage is falling apart and his wife is threatening to leave him if he renews his contract. Studio boss Stanley Shriner Hoff isn t taking the news too well, and he ll do anything he can to get his man to sign on the dotted line even if means exposing dark secrets...
Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival, The Big Knife also boasts a remarkable cast list including Jack Palance (Shane) as Castle and Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront) as Hoff, plus Shelley Winters (The Night of the Hunter), Ida Lupino (On Dangerous Ground), Jean Hagen (Singin in the Rain) and Everett Sloane (Citizen Kane).
Special Features:
- Brand-new 2K restoration from original film elements produced by Arrow Films exclusively for this release
- Original English mono audio uncompressed LPCM
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Commentary by film critics Glenn Kenny and Nick Pinkerton, recorded exclusively for this release
- Bass on Titles Saul Bass, responsible for The Big Knife s credit sequence, discusses some of his classic work in this self-directed documentary from 1972
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Nathalie Morris
U.S. STREET DATE: AUGUST 29.
UK STREET DATE: AUGUST 28.
The Hunt
Alongside Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg (Festen, Far From the Madding Crowd) is one of Danish cinema's finest modern exports. Perhaps his greatest film, The Hunt, is a sublimely orchestrated exercise in tension which features a tour-de-force central performance from Mads Mikkelsen (Rogue One, Casino Royale), who was awarded Best Actor at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for his performance.
Mikkelsen is Lukas, a recently-divorced primary school teacher locked in an acrimonious custody battle over his teenage son but just as his fortunes begin to change with the arrival of a new love his world is torn apart by an innocent lie. Persecuted by his local community, accusations escalate and Lukas soon faces unanimous condemnation from everyone around him, including his closest friends.
Featuring a stellar supporting cast from Danish Film and TV's finest including Thomas Bo Larsen (Pusher), Anne Louise Hassing (The Idiots) and Susse Wold (Unit 1), The Hunt, eschews the rules of Vinterberg and his colleagues' filmmaking manifesto Dogme95 for one of the most beautifully photographed and perfectly scripted films in recent years.
Special Features:
- Original 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 stereo options
- Optional English subtitles
- The Making of 'The Hunt' - featuring director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen
- Deleted and extended scenes
- Alternate ending
- Outtakes
- Original trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options
- First pressing only: Booklet featuring new writing on the film and a contemporary interview with Thomas Vinterberg, illustrated with original production stills.
UK STREET DATE: AUGUST 7.