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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 29 movies from Special Touch Studios
Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist from Martinique, has just been appointed head of department at the psychiatric hospital in Blida, Algeria. His methods contrast with those of the other doctors in a context of colonization. A biopic in the heart of the Algerian war where a fight is waged in the name of Humanity.
Apr 2025
Robinson is a doctor and unlike Robinson Crusoe, his solitude is voluntary but his island in the Mediterranean Sea is invaded by migrants, NGOs, guards. Friday is a castaway, the only one from his boat to have survived when sailing from Africa to Italy. During his strolls on the island, Robinson confronts his own solitude by keeping a diary - that works like augmented reality - filled with extraordinary beings and events, which both fill and trouble his daily life.
Jun 2023
When ten-year-old Birahima’s mother dies, he leaves his native village in Guinea, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima becomes a child-soldier. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity.
Mar 2026
Cambodia, once the ancient kingdom of Funan, April 17th, 1975. The entire country falls under the tyranny of Angkar, the communist party of the Khmer Rouge. The cities are abandoned, the population is thrown to the roads and forced to walk towards an uncertain future…
Mar 2019
Rio de Janeiro, near future. Marlow is a police officer assigned to a mission to find Captain Kurtz, a famous policeman who went missing in mysterious circumstances. Marlow has to do his mission in a boat, undertaking a dangerous journey through the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Jun 2025
After spending years in Belgium, a young Congolese man returns to his birthplace of Kinshasa to confront the intricacies of his family and culture.
Nov 2023
November 1980. Southern Iran. We are at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Abadan, the capital of the Iranian petrol industry resists the repeated assaults of the Iraqi army, but is soon under full siege. Omid, a 14-year-old boy, has stayed back in the city, with his grandfather, waiting for his elder brother to come back from the frontline. Along with Omid, we discover several other uncommon characters, each one having stayed for a personal reason. Each one resisting in his own way. But as the Iraqi siege of the city hardens, Omid has to quickly find a way to save those he loves.
In a world of zany souls and colorful spirit-creatures, Jacob Marley is missing out on the party. His chaffey chains and lingering bitterness from working with mean-old-Scrooge has kept him from getting his wings. While the menagerie of whimsical characters around him sing boisterous songs and pull pranks on hapless humans, he wanders the cobblestone streets of London in a perpetual monologue of boo-hoo, poor me. His only friend is a quiet Raven who loyally looks out for him. But this all changes one Autumn day when Maybelline, Marleys tough-love angel parole officer gives him an off-the-record opportunity: scare Scrooge into becoming a better man and Marley can earn his wings!
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In a Somali village, Barni, a mysterious hitwoman in her fifties, dramatically resurfaces years after vanishing without a trace. There, she's intent on getting revenge on vicious gangster Ardo, who rules the village with an iron fist.
At the bottom of the wolf pack, a young black wolf avoids confrontation and tries to take advantage of the fruits of others labour. This alongside his growing popularity with the she-wolves, our Casanova greatly irritates the alphas of his pack. As he comes of age he fights for survival in his own cowardly manner, losing all of his family along the way. Attracted by some young females he finds a place in a new wolf pack and endures the dominance of a new alpha male wolf. Only at an older age does the black wolf rises up to the occasion to defend more than himself.Its a story about a wolf trying to become a wolf.
ANANDA (in French: La Javanaise) is a fictional story, based on historical figures and events, of a young girls journey to find freedom and return home. In 1893, free-spirit ANANDA (13), lives happily with her little sister Tika (8) and their grandmother EMBAH (53) in a seaside village in Java. Yearning to be a shaman like Embah, Ananda enters the forbidden jungle and encounters a fierce TIGER. Suddenly, the girl and the tiger are both captured by traffickers. Ananda is sent to Paris, France where she works as a model and servant for a bohemian painter who abuses her. On a quest to return home, Ananda escapes, disguises herself as a boy, and encounters the Tiger again at the Cirque Fernando, where Ananda finds a new family among the misfits of the circus.
No one believed in him, he hung in there. For the first time, the basketball player Rudy Gobert reveals himself. An inspiring destiny and a dive into the backstage of the NBA.
Sep 2023
It portrays a Teochew family over six generations in Swatow, China, from the 19th century to the present. As background, the film will set under the great upheavals of China and the temptation to migrate.
Oct 2023
When anti-colonialist writer Anton de Kom returns to Suriname in 1933, he is brutally imprisoned. In jail, he finds a gateway to a mythological rainforest where he must find the inner strength to help his people by undergoing a life-threatening journey.
Rwanda. Summer of 1994. Didi (12) survived thanks to her smarts and hatred for all living creatures, especially humans. Eric (8) survived thanks to his wild imagination and sensitivity. The two kids of opposite tribes are forced to venture together into the post massacre land in search for food, new home and their lost souls.
In a Zimbabwean township facing the drying up of the river, three children witness the arrival of a strange visitor who claims to come from the future. Loveness, a brave little albino girl, seizes the opportunity and saves the goddess of water, trapped in the knot of time.
Walid, an overweight Lebanese man, is caught in a destructive spiral. He works at his uncle's tennis club but is sent away to build a tennis court. His encounters with Laith and Maya, with whom Walid shares more than he thinks, lead him to find the path back towards hope.
After more than twenty-five years of absence, Paul Rivest returns to Melvile. He knows this little town pretty well, having spent all his summer vacations there as a child with his grandmother. Feeling responsible for the death of his first love and his best friend in a fire that destroyed the region the summer of his fifteenth birthday, his return to Melvile forces him to stir up the past. As Paul discovers the real reasons for Ruth and Thomas’s death, his stay in Melvile turns into a nightmare because the town of Melvile is not done with him.
Twenty-seven thousand photos of corpses, and bodies tortured in detention centers of the Syrian regime, are leaked in 2014 by a mysterious deserter with the code name "Caesar". Because of the geopolitical interests of some countries and the indifference of other nations, international justice refuses to prosecute the regime of Bashar Al Assad responsible for crimes reminiscent of Nazi or Khmer barbarism. Filmed throughout Europe over nearly four years between 2016 and 2020, the film recounts the behind-the-scenes and twists and turns of investigations and proceedings that will lead to the issuance of arrest warrants for the highest officials of Bashar al Assad's administration for crimes against humanity.
Feb 2023
Sorya, a young Cambodian woman aged 17 years old, arrives in Phnom Penh to work in a textile factory with her best friend, Lida. With a hellish pace of work and no talking allowed, Sorya is not a natural at sewing, unlike her friend who rapidly works her way up the corporate ladder. Sorya prefers the nightlife and city living of the capital. One night, she is singing karaoke in Lucky bar. Everybody there is captivated by her voice. It’s the beginning of her path to stardom but between love affairs, friendships that are broken and then mended, desire and frustration, more trouble lies ahead for Sorya as she tries to find her path in life!